Nightfall found the search parties in want of any progress beyond that garnered by process of elimination. The principal leaders were gathered in the drawing room of Wingham manner, arguing over the results and their impact on the plans for the morrow.

And to add further complication, it seemed that young Harlow Barnstabrake had disappeared.

“Blast the boy! Leave it to Harlow to go wandering off on his own like that. A real Barnstabrake doesn’t go off on half cocked adventures and get themselves lost in a little bit of wood, no indeed sir!”

“I really regret having suggested that Mr. Barnstabrake was in sufficient health to participate. In hindsight he really could have done with the extra rest.”

“Nothing can keep a Barnstabrake down for long, mark my words Doctor. I’m sure young Harlow will come back having discovered something or other, by Jingo! Now, what of that damaged fence near the Hudson place?”

Mr. Stokes sat in a corner of the drawing room listening as the banter shot back and forth, his legs propped gratefully up on a side table near where his pistols were piled up.

It had been a thoroughly dreadful day. If it weren’t bad enough to be aroused at a deplorable hour to embark on a wholly distasteful enterprise in such bucolic company, his previous service to Mr. Barnstabrake Sr. over the past several days had apparently led the latter to conclude that Mr. Stokes was a “damn steady fellow”, and had therefore requested of Sir Walter that the invaluable secretary might continue to accompany him, to which Sir Walter had completely assented. For his part Mr. Stokes felt that he had already accrued a lifetime’s worth of exposure to the profuse bombast of the elder Mr. Barnstabrake, but in deference both to his employer and to his own standing in the community he found himself wholly unable to extricate himself from the situation in any suitably graceful manner. The consequence of Mr Stoke’s cultured propriety and refined consideration was certainly the most tiresome fifteen hours of his life. Even now in the relative sophistication of Wingham Manor (however diluted it may be with the rustic bumbledom), with a solid glass of excellent port in hand, Mr. Stokes still found himself shivering over the whole ghastly experience.

The conversation had rather devolved from a discussion about whether the damage to a fence near the Hudson place could be attributed to the work of Black Abraham or Mr. Wiggins’s pigs to a heated dispute between the said Mr. Wiggins and Mr. Hudson over whether Mr. Wiggins was going to take fiscal responsibility for the larks of his wayward porcines or whether Mr. Hudson was just a shoddy fence builder who should jolly well pick up his game a bit, when a disturbance in the outer hall abruptly distracted everyone’s attention.

A tumult of male voices had arisen from outside the drawing room, over all of which a lone soprano sailed shrilly in confident assertion, demanding to speak to the Sheriff at once. Even as many were still engaged in argument the drawing room doors were flung open with a jarring bang and Miss Bellingham swept majestically into the room in tattered and leaf strewn splendour.

“Bring me thither to the Sheriff, and hear you all what a tale I have! I told you all before, and it’s all true, I have seen it!”

The Sheriff ran a distinctly critical eye over the bedraggled Miss Bellingham.

“Who is this young woman, and what on earth is she doing here?”

“This is….”

“I am Abigayle Bellingham, a Supplicant of the Earth…”

“What the devil….”

“...and I bring you tidings of the most Terrible Portend. I know what happened to dear Agatha, for it has all happened to me as well, or nearly anyway.”

“What! Explain!”

“Indeed yes! It was Kobalds after all, just as I said all along….”

“...oh for goodness sake…”

“....I didn’t see them, mind you…”

“Oh, yes, of course not…”

“I was blindfolded you see, but I am quite certain it was Kobalds, I’m sure I could hear their little voices chattering in their queer language.”

“You had better explain, Miss Bellingham. This is a deadly serious affair, and there is no room whatsoever for spurious fantasies.”

“I can assure you, Mister Sheriff, that I never bother with those, I am usually much too busy cultivating spiritual energies.”

“Oh dear. Bring me a chair. Please explain from the beginning, Miss Bellingham. And please, don’t exaggerate. Doctor Ford, would you be kind enough take notes?”

“Exaggeration produces an impure miasma which oppresses the mind and sometimes gives good little Brownies a nasty chill (for they are ever truthful creatures).”

“Please, Miss Bellingham, kindly begin your narrative, and for goodness sake don’t drivel.”

“I never drivel, Mister Sheriff, it causes…..”

“In heavens name, please!”

It was a few more minutes before the combined efforts of the Sheriff and Doctor Ford could convince Miss Bellingham to lay out her narrative in an orderly fashion. In the meanwhile, paper and ink were brought forth and extra chairs were drawn up. Miss Bellingham filled the center of the room in regal exaltation, and after taking stock of the whole company with a sweeping gaze of confident mastery, began her narrative.

“I have sensed for some time, gentlemen, that negative vibrations have been about of late and the earth beneath our homes has become permeated with dark energies of a most incommodious character. At first I thought it was because of our thoughtlessness towards the Dryads or perhaps because of the farmers driving so many of the wee forest creatures from their little burrows.”

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“I say!”

“Silence! I will hear Miss Bellingham.”

“Thank you, Mister Sheriff, where was I?”

“Vibrations, or something.”

“Ah yes! Now then yes, about the vibrations. One should always be very sensitive to the vibrations that circulate about one, as I always say…”

“Is it at all possible for you to remain on topic, Miss Bellingham?”

“I am on topic, my dear Mister Sheriff. Anyway, as I always say…”

“Can you please just proceed to the salient facts?”

“I thought you said to spare no detail?”

“I have changed my mind, I think. I should have asked you to spare no detail regarding the facts of importance.”

“But vibrations are important!”

“All facts of importance excluding vibrations, then.”

“Well then, you should have said so in the first place, Mister Sheriff. Fickle sorts of fellows you public officers are.”

“You will address the His Lordship as M’lord Sheriff, young lady!”

“Why?”

“Please, just let Miss Bellingham continue with her narrative.”

“Thank you, Mister M’lord Sheriff. Why don’t I just begin all over again?”

“I think that would be advisable. And please, do skip the bits about the vibrations and Brownies and all. Why don’t you begin with events since the Moot earlier this week?”

“Very well, if that will make you happy, Mister Sheriff. I seek to be ever obliging, it produces positive vibra…..oh sorry, I forgot already. No vibrations.”

“We would all be very much obliged, yes. Please continue.”

“Very well.

Now you see, gentlemen, after the Moot-thingies were all finished with I felt a very deep spiritual repression, as I knew it was really was Kobalds (but nobody would listen to me). I therefore resolved that I at least would not remain idle while poor dear Agatha languished as the captive of a Kobald Prince. And so, I resolved to search Crickwood.”

“We already had a full two score men searching there.”

“But not for the right things. You weren’t looking for Kobalds, were you, and you were not keeping an eye for their tiny footpaths.”

“No, I should say we were not.”

“Exactly. Anyway, yesterday I was quite sure I had found one (a Kobald path, that is), and was following it closely, when all of a sudden the Kobalds dropped a nasty gunny sack or something over my head, and I fell into an enchanted sleep.

I don’t know how long I remained asleep. However, I awoke to find that I had been blindfolded, and therefore I couldn’t see anything. I knew the Kobalds were all about me though, they bade me arise and then they led me down some path or other, and when they at length stopped they removed the blindfold and I was presented in splendour to their prince.

He was really quite a bit larger than I expected. In fact, he might have been a Forest God, for he was quite tall enough to have been an ordinary man. I saw no others except him and his immediate servants (who were all very large as well, quite as tall as common men) and his great hounds. And of course there was also dear Agatha.”

“You saw Miss Watson!”

“Who? Oh yes, dear Agatha. Yes, I saw her.”

“Was she alright?”

“I don’t know, I did not have the opportunity to enquire, my attention was most distracted by the Kobald Prince (or Forest God).”

“What do you mean?”

“He was most impertinent. He attempted to woo me in the most forward terms. But I repulsed him! For his professions of love were most vulgar (and most unbecoming for a Kobald of his standing, as I told him at the time), and besides I have sworn myself to remain a Vestal of the Muses. And so I fled…..”

“You what?”

“I fled.”

“Are you saying he just let you get away?”

“Oh no, I had to bite his servants quite forcefully, and then he sent his great hounds to pursue me, terrible black beasts possessing the most negative of energies. But I eluded them all, and sped thither to bring you tidings of my great adventure and to tell you that I was right all along. I told you from the beginning it was Kobalds, and I was right!”

An insecure sort of mutter spread from one end of the assembly to the other as Miss Bellingham finished her narrative, smiling grandly as her gaze followed the passing word with a look of regal and benevolent triumph. From his vantage in the corner, Mr. Stokes wondered that the eccentric young woman didn’t make grand curtsies to all the company after so grossly fanciful an exhibition.

The Sheriff arose. “Well, thank you, Miss Bellingham. A most...intriguing...testimony, to be sure. I have quite a number of questions for you, however….”

“Questions?”

“Indeed. To begin with, where were you when you were….accosted, shall we say?”

“Don’t remember. I was too busy following the Kobald footpath.”

“Do you perhaps know, then, where you were when you started following the, ahem, ‘path’?”

“No.”

“I see. Where were you, then, when the blindfold was removed? Do you at least have any recollection as to the character of your whereabouts at the time?”

“Oh yes indeed, it was the Palace of the Kobald Prince.”

“Ah? And what led you to suppose it was such?”

“Because the Kobald Prince was living in it, of course, along with his servants and hounds.”

“Oh dear. Is that all?”

“Yes. No. Actually, it was rather more damp and overgrown than I should have expected, but perhaps his servants had been busy of late and not tidied up properly. All the stones were dreadfully mossy and slippery.”

“Stones? What stones?”

“The flat ones on the ground, the walls, the ceiling, and of course the big square ones all about the prince’s throne throne.”

“A Barrow!”

“I beg your pardon, Mister Sheriff?”

“She’s describing a Barrow, isn’t she? A pagan tomb. Barrow Heath is honeycombed with them, isn’t it Doctor Ford?”

“Oh yes, they’ve all been empty as long as anyone can remember. I used to explore them quite a bit, looking for artifacts. A few bits of pottery, flints, and some bones are all the sort of thing that ever turns up, anything of value was looted centuries ago. Do you think Black Abraham is hiding in a Barrow?”

“Based on Miss Bellingham’s testimony, I am convinced of it. How many Barrows are there in the heath?”

“Impossible to say. Easily dozens, and not all of them above ground. They’ve never been really mapped. The farmers occasionally use them as storehouses, though, and they’ll know a good many of the more usable ones. And as Black Abraham is a stranger in the neighborhood, he is unlikely to have found one that is not already known.”

“To Barrow Heath then! Now that Miss Bellingham has escaped to us, surely Black Abraham knows we’re onto his scent. We have not a moment to lose, I want search parties dispatched to the heath immediately. Get every torch and lantern you can lay your hands on.”

“Heavens above! How ponderously silly you all are! I just told you the whole story, and you still don’t believe that it’s Kobalds?”