“Thou lying thief!” said I.  “What new slander is this?”

“Come, come,” says he, looking roguish; “that won’t do for me that have seen the false light on Cuddan Point more times than I can count; and so has every fisherman in the bay.”

Well, I kicked him through the gate for it, and flung his basket after him; but the tale could not be so dismissed.  “It may be,” thought I, “some one of Pengersick has engaged upon this wickedness on his own account”; and for my Master’s credit I resolved to keep watch.

I took therefore the porter into my secret, who agreed to let me through the gate towards midnight without telling a soul.  I took a sheepskin with me and a poignard for protection; and for a week, from midnight to dawn, I played sentinel on Cuddan Point, walking to and fro, or stretched under the lee of a rock whence I could not miss any light shown on the headland, if Peter Chynoweth’s tale held any truth.

By the eighth trial I had pretty well made up my mind (and without astonishment) that Peter Chynoweth was a liar.  But scarcely had I reached my post that night when, turning, I descried a radiance as of a lantern, following me at some fifty paces.  On the instant I gripped my poignard and stepped behind a boulder.  The light drew nearer, came, and passed me.  To my bewilderment it was no lantern, but an open flame, running close along the turf and too low for anyone to be carrying it:  nor was the motion that of a light which a man carries.  Moreover, though it passed me within half-a-dozen yards and lit up the stone I stood behind, I saw nobody and heard no footstep, though the wind (which was south-westerly) blew from it to me.  In this breeze the flame quivered, though not violently but as it were a ball of fire rolling with a flickering crest.

It went by, and I followed it at something above walking pace until upon the very verge of the head-land, where I had no will to risk my neck, it halted and began to be heaved up and down much like the poop-light of a vessel at sea.  In this play it continued for an hour at least; then it came steadily back towards me by the way it had gone, and as it came I ran upon it with my dagger.  But it slipped by me, travelling at speed towards the mainland; whither I pelted after it hot-foot, and so across the fields towards Pengersick.  Strain as I might, I could not overtake it; yet contrived to keep it within view, and so well that I was bare a hundred yards behind when it came under the black shadow of the castle and without pause glided across the dry moat and so up the face of the wall to my lady’s window, which there overhung.  And into this window it passed before my very eyes and vanished.

I know not what emboldened me, but from the porter’s lodge I went straight up to my Master’s chamber, where (though the hour must have been two in the morning or thereabouts) a light was yet burning.  Also—­but this had become ordinary—­a smell of burning gums and herbs filled the passage leading to his door.  He opened to my knock, and stood before me in his dressing-gown of sables—­a tall figure of a man and youthful, though already beginning to stoop.  Over his shoulder I perceived the room swimming with coils of smoke which floated in their wreaths from a brazier hard by the fireplace.