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“Uhm–m!” murmured Dicky reflectively, carefully scrutinising lock and key–and he was not unskilled in locks. “Aye, a good lock; a very good lock. Yes, yes! Just what you want; the very thing. They’ll no pick that.”

“No! They’ll never pick that. Ho! Ho!” laughed the complacent farmer.

Then Dicky said he “maun be steppin’. It was gettin’ late.” And so, after one more drink, and another “to the King, God bless him,” and yet one more to “themselves,” and a fourth, just to see that the others went the right way and behaved themselves, the two parted, the best and dearest of friends.

It might have been the outcome of a good conscience, or perhaps it was the soothing thought that he had made a good bargain, and had got those bullocks at a figure lower than he had been prepared to pay; or, possibly, it may only have been the outcome of that extra last glass or two that he had had with Dicky. But whatever it was, the fact remained that the farmer’s slumbers that night were very profound, his snoring heavier than common. Towards morning, but whilst yet the night was dark, dreaming that he and the mare were swimming a deep and icy river, he woke with a start. Everything was strangely still; even the mare made no sound. And–surely it must be freezing! He was chilled to the bone. And then, on a brain where yet sang the fumes of brandy, it dawned that he had absolutely no covering on him. Sleepily he felt with his hands this way and that, up and down. To no purpose. His blankets must certainly have fallen on the floor, but try as he might, no hand could he lay on them. Slipping out of bed to grope for flint and steel wherewith to strike a light, with soul-rending shock he ran his forehead full butt against the open door of his room.

“De’il tak’ it! What’s this?” he bellowed. It was inconceivable that he had forgotten to close and lock that door before getting into bed, however much brandy he might have drunk overnight. What was the meaning of it? At last a light, got from the smouldering kitchen fire, revealed the hideous truth–his room was empty, the cherished mare gone! The door (as he had found to his cost) stood wide open; along the floor were carefully spread his blankets, and over them no doubt the mare had been led out without making noise sufficient to awaken even a light sleeper, let alone one whose potations had been deep as the farmer’s.

Lights now flashed and twinkled from room to room, from house to stable and byre, and back again, as the frenzied, cursing farmer and his servants tumbled over each other in their haste to find the lost animal. It is even said that one servant lass, in her ardour of search, was found looking under the bed in an upstairs room–scarcely a likely grazing ground for any four-footed animal (unless perhaps it might be a night-mare). But whether she expected to find there the lost quadruped, or the man guilty of its abduction, tradition says not. At any rate, all that any of the searchers found–and that not till broad daylight–was the print of the good mare’s hoofs in some soft ground over which she had been ridden fast. And no one had heard even so much as the smallest sound.

The day was yet young, and the breeze played gratefully cool on Dicky’s brow, as, fearless of pursuit, he rode contentedly along towards home a few hours later. Skirting by Naworth, thence up by Tindale Tarn and down the burn to South Tyne, he had now come to the Fells a little to the south and east of Haltwhistle. To him came a man on foot; and, said he:

“Have ye seen onny stray cattle i’ your travels? I’ve lost a yoke o’ fat bullocks.”