one bad october night in the high wolds beyond wiltshire, with a north wind chaunting of winter, with the old leaves letting go their hold one by one from branches and dropping down to decay, with a mournful sound of owls, and in fearsome loneliness, there trudged in broken boots and in wet and windy rags an old man, stooping low under a sack of emeralds. it were easy to see had you been travelling late on that inauspicious night, that the burden of the sack was far too great for the poor old man that bore it. and had you flashed a lantern in his face there was a look there of hopelessness and fatigue that would have told you it was no wish of his that kept him tottering on under that bloated sack.
when the menacing look of the night and its cheerless sounds, and the cold, and the weight of the sack, had all but brought him to the door of death, and he had dropped his sack onto the road and was dragging it on behind him, just as he felt that his final hour was come, and come (which was worse) as he held the accursed sack, just then he saw the bulk and the black shape of the sign of the lost shepherd loom up by the ragged way. he opened the door and staggered into the light and sank on a bench with his huge sack beside him.
all this you had seen had you been on that lonely road, so late on those bitter wolds, with their outlines vast and mournful in the dark, and their little clumps of trees sad with october. but neither you nor i were out that night. i did not see the poor old man and his sack until he sank down all of a heap in the lighted inn.
and yon the blacksmith was there; and the carpenter, willie losh; and jackers, the postman's son. and they gave him a glass of beer. and the old man drank it up, still hugging his emeralds.
and at last they asked him what he had in his sack, the question he clearly dreaded; and he only clasped yet tighter the sodden sack and mumbled he had potatoes.
"potatoes," said yon the blacksmith.
"potatoes," said willie losh.
and when he heard the doubt that was in their voices the old man shivered and moaned.
"potatoes, did you say?" said the postman's son. and they all three rose and tried to peer at the sack that the rain-soaked wayfarer so zealously sheltered.
and from the old man's fierceness i had said that, had it not been for that foul night on the roads and the weight he had carried so far and the fearful winds of october, he had fought with the blacksmith, the carpenter and the postman's son, all three, till he beat them away from his sack. and weary and wet as he was he fought them hard.
i should no doubt have interfered; and yet the three men meant no harm to the wayfarer, but resented the reticence that he displayed to them though they had given him beer; it was to them as though a master key had failed to open a cupboard. and, as for me, curiosity held me down to my chair and forbade me to interfere on behalf of the sack; for the old man's furtive ways, and the night out of which he came, and the hour of his coming, and the look of his sack, all made me long as much to know what he had, as even the blacksmith, the carpenter and the postman's son.
and then they found the emeralds. they were all bigger than hazel nuts, hundreds and hundreds of them: and the old man screamed.
"come, come, we're not thieves," said the blacksmith.
"we're not thieves," said the carpenter.
"we're not thieves," said the postman's son.
and with awful fear on his face the wayfarer closed his sack, whimpering over his emeralds and furtively glancing round as though the loss of his secret were and utterly deadly thing. and then they asked him to give them just one each, just one huge emerald each, because they had given him a glass of beer. then to see the wayfarer shrink against his sack and guard it with clutching fingers one would have said that he was a selfish man, were it not for the terror that was freezing his face. i have seen men look sheer at death with far less fear.
and they took their emerald all three, one enormous emerald each, while the old man hopelessly struggled till he saw his three emeralds go, and fell to the floor and wept, a pitiable, sodden heap.
and about that time i began to hear far off down the windy road, by which that sack had come, faintly at first and slowly louder and louder, the click clack clop of a lame horse coming nearer. click clack clop and a loose shoe rattling, the sound of a horse too weary to be out upon such a night, too lame to be out at all.
click clack clop. and all of a sudden the old wayfarer heard it; heard it above the sound of his won sobbing, and at once went white to the lips. such sudden fear as blanched him in a moment struck right to the hearts of all there. they muttered to him that it was only their play, they hastily whispered excuses, they asked him what was wrong, but seemed scarcely to hope for an answer, nor did he speak, but sat with a frozen stare, all at once dry-eyed, a monument to terror.
nearer and nearer came the click clack clop.
and when i saw the expression of that man's face and how its horror deepened as the ominous sound drew nearer, then i knew that something was wrong. and looking for the last time upon all four i saw the wayfarer horror-struck by his sack and the other three crowding round to put their huge emeralds back then, even on such a night, i slipped away from the inn.
outside the bitter wind roared in my ears, and close in the darkness the horse went click clack clop.
and as soon as my eyes could see at all in the night i saw a man in a huge hat looped up in front, wearing a sword in a scabbard shabby and huge, and looking blacker than the darkness, riding on a lean horse slowly up to the inn. whether his were the emeralds, or who he was, or why he rode a lame horse on such a night, i did not stop to discover, but went at once from the inn as he strode in his great black riding coat up to the door.
and that was the last that was ever seen of the wayfarer; the blacksmith, the carpenter or the postman's son.
