HOW BURROUGH PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE.

The first thing John Burrough saw, when he had crossed the bog, was a crumpled newspaper lying upon the turf beside the river. He paused to regard it with a frown. Crusoe himself could not have been much more surprised at beholding the footprint upon the sand in his desert island.

By the presence of that piece of paper Burrough knew that his secret nook had been discovered. Someone shared his secret. Someone had found a way through the bog to the bend in the river, and had dared thus to desecrate the spot. The secret was out. Burrough sighed when he reflected that a crowd of holiday-makers might invade his solitude at any moment.

The river was the East Okement upon Dartmoor. It came sliding down a bed of stone, which was here and there as smooth as a billiard-table, tumbled over a succession of ledges, and finally swept round a bend to enter the little patch of unexplored territory which Burrough had made his own.

At the foot of a descent, so steep as to be generally avoided, stretched an immense bog always choked with water, even in summer, because it was fed by springs—the largest could be seen bubbling like a miniature fountain not very far from that obnoxious piece of paper. Apparently there was no pathway through this bog. Beyond was a towering fortification, composed of blocks of granite covered with black and grey lichens, and piled one upon the other in a wild confusion which was yet suggestive of method.

On the opposite side of the tiny river sloped a precipice almost sheer in places, everywhere covered with trees, oak, ash, and beech, plentifully besprinkled with hornbeam, hazel, and mountain-ash. That precipice was a wall of mud and saturated mosses. No wonder the foliage was so green and bright. Red streamlets trickled into the river after filtration through the bog forest. At the summit pink-coned larches could be seen nodding against the intense blue of the sky; lower, the wine-coloured plumes of a copper-beech; still lower the silvery bark of birches. A rowan covered with creamy blooms dipped to the river as though admiring its beauty in the broken water. Beneath its branches appeared pink spikes of rose-bay, and raspberry canes covered with unripe fruit.

Draping the boggy wall were ferns in tropical luxuriance. The royal osmunda could be seen in clumps and thickets; fronds, ten feet in length, bending to touch the shining water, or towering towards the oak-leaves. Beside the river was a natural arm-chair of granite, comfortably upholstered with golden mosses. There Burrough lolled day after day reading or writing. Below was a pool free from rocks and bedded with yellow sand. Black trout were always waiting for what the river might bring down to them, and very little in awe of the man in the granite chair. Probably they regarded him as the very latest kind of Dartmoor pony. Burrough seated himself, lighted a cigarette, and tried to forget that crumpled sheet of paper. He looked at the tender ivy trailing across the blocks of granite, at a brown lizard flashing by, and a viper basking on a warm shelf. Butterflies flitted past, bees were working in and out of their nests, flycatchers flirted their tails upon the rocks, and to the music of the birds was added the sleepy symphony of the river singing about the big stones.

“Bother that newspaper,” said Burrough.

He rose and went about his tiny kingdom, to search for other traces of the unwarrantable intrusion. Just below the pool a tiny island divided the river. The main current swept beneath a tangle of boughs, caused by the trees of the eyot and those of the bog forest hanging over and meeting, compelling the stickles to descend through perpetual twilight. The smaller channel separated the eyot from the great quaking bog. There the water, slightly tinged with sulphate of iron, could be seen bubbling restlessly amid the brilliant mosses. The edge of the bog appeared to have broken out into a scarlet rash, into numerous red blotches rather suggestive of tiny scraps of raw meat. These were carnivorous sundews, hard at work catching and eating flies. Beyond the sundew shambles were the olive-green leaves and tender grey flowers of the bog violet; and all along the “coast-line” of the eyot were big clumps of bog asphodel.

Burrough breathed a sigh of relief. The affairs of his kingdom appeared to be in perfect order. There were no tins nor bottles, nor any sign of the past pleasures of a picnicking party. He decided to burn the offending paper and then forget all about it; but before doing so he thought it advisable to go through the eyot, which was not, strictly speaking, a part of his kingdom, but merely a dependant state.

The young man reached the eyot by means of the great stones which during the winter were submerged. Once there he had to imagine himself a tailed being. Progress could only be made by resorting to Simian methods, on account of the huge boulders, the hidden pools, and the tropical luxuriance of the undergrowth. The water-birds, which had their nests among the sedges, were not unduly alarmed by his presence. Sometimes, while feeling for a safe spot to rest upon, his foot crushed the shells of eggs which had lately given forth young birds. The river was just visible as it tumbled from one shelf of rock to another. At the other end of the eyot the channels united to plunge away between two steep and shining walls of stone. There tall thickets of osmunda lifted their flowering plumes where the rough winds could not reach, and every rock was covered with asphodel, and the banks of the bog were lurid with mosses of every tint. Burrough balanced himself upon a giant’s pebble and looked upward. He saw a dense wavering screen composed of oak foliage and that of rowan, mingled with long fern fronds, and for background the river falling and flashing in lines of silver. It was as though the river was forcing itself between the boughs and leaves and fronds; that it was the weight of the water, not the motion of the breeze, which caused them to sway and dance. Burrough gazed upon the scene with the selfish joy of knowing he had the place to himself. No one saw the beauties of that hidden nook except himself. He began to assure himself that the crumpled newspaper had been carried over the precipice by a wind, and had not been dropped by any invader.

Then his eyes fell upon a dry sand-spit at the foot of a rock, beneath the thicket of osmunda. Right in the centre appeared the impression of a single footprint.

There was no mistake. It was a woman’s footprint, in spite of its ridiculous smallness. There was the deep imprint made by the heel—a half-crown would have covered it. There was the dainty point. Burrough wondered how five pink feminine toes could possibly be compressed within so slight a compass.

In fancy Burrough saw the hand which had dropped that piece of paper. He could guess what it was like after looking at that footprint. Give a distinguished palæontologist the fossil bone of some extinct species, and he will proceed to construct and describe the creature by that one bone. In like manner Burrough built up the perfect image of the unknown damsel, who had penetrated into the interior of his little kingdom, and had dared to desecrate it by throwing paper about, by that single tiny footprint in the sand.

She was young. That was certain, because none but an agile girl could have fought her way across the eyot. She was small. That was evident by the ridiculous footprint. The young man decided she was dark, with bright colour, eyes of deep blue, rather thick eyebrows, and laughing mouth. He arrived at this conclusion because he knew such a face would look exceedingly well against the thicket of osmunda and the falling water. He decided she would be dressed in grey, and he added a ribbon at her waist. He was not sure of the colour of that ribbon. It was a tan shoe that had made the imprint. He was sure of that. It suited the grey skirt exactly.

The young man drew a tape-measure from his pocket. He carried it about with him for the purpose of measuring the stone remains upon the moor. He was finding out all he could about these remains, because he intended to write a book on the subject. The sort of book a few people might buy, to adorn a table or shelf, but nobody would ever read.

This was much better than measuring hoary antiquities of the stone age. Already he was far more interested in that footprint than in all the remains of prehistoric man. From heel to toe six inches and a fraction. He did not record the measurement in his note-book. Somehow he felt sure he would remember it; and, as a matter of fact, his memory justified the confidence he placed in it.

The crumpled sheet of newspaper was not nearly so objectionable an object as it had been. Indeed, it was with quite friendly eyes that Burrough regarded it when he returned from the eyot. Had a man dropped it there, or some picnicking matron, or even any ordinary young person, the act would have remained unpardonable. But the girl with the dainty footprint might surely do as she pleased. She was quite justified in leaving it there, for how could she be expected to carry it about with her if she did not require it? Really it was not an eyesore at all. It looked rather well lying crumpled upon the turf beside a clump of whortleberries. That secluded nook had needed a civilising touch, and now it had been supplied by the kindly thought and gracious presence of the fair invader. Something was gleaming beside the newspaper. It was a hairpin—not a common, unsightly, black object, but a slender golden hairpin, delicately shaped and deliciously fragrant.

So the unknown was a fair girl, and not dark, as he had supposed. She would not secure dark tresses with a golden hairpin. Burrough constructed her over again. The face was much the same—rather less colour, perhaps—and the eyes were grey. The figure was a trifle fuller, and the frock was of some dark material. He did not remove the tan shoes, but he added brown silk stockings to match.

Burrough slipped the hairpin into his pocket. He thought it would come in handy for cleaning his pipe. Then he picked up the piece of paper. It was damp, and so he knew it must have been dropped the day before. It would have been in the evening, for he had been there till four o’clock on the previous afternoon. He opened the paper and shook it out, then dropped it with a shudder. It seemed to him that the folds were smeared with stains like blood.

He had forgotten those horrible things which are the lot of human beings—sickness, sorrowing, suffering, and death. But when he looked up he saw upon a patch of ground, which made the centre of a small amphitheatre of rocks, the carcase of a horned mountain sheep, every bit of flesh well cleaned from its ribs and skull. Around were evidences of a struggle. The greater portion of the fleece was twisted into a shapeless mass, but scraps of wool were held upon every bramble and gorse-bush, and here and there were wisps torn from the poor hunted creature by its ravenous pursuers. That sheep had been hunted, dragged down, and destroyed by starving dogs. Burrough knew that another carcase—that of a pony—was lying in a hole just beyond the wall of rocks. Those bones, too, were white and well-cleaned by the busy ants. The hide had been gnawed by dogs, and nest-making birds had found the mane and tail very useful. That pony had been bitten by a viper. Burrough remembered it when he saw the red stains upon the piece of paper.

The next minute he was laughing. He had spread out the paper, and other marks became at once visible.

“My lady is an aristocrat,” he said; “she has blue blood.”

After all, the paper had only been used for cleaning paint-brushes. Probably the Lady of the Footprint had been trying to put the sunset upon canvas—it was just the sort of impossible task a pretty young girl would attempt—and the blood-red stains represented the fiery clouds, and the blue smears were the sky above. Burrough pushed the paper into a gorse-bush and burnt it, bush and all. After all, he was sorry he had discovered it. He was glad he had found the golden hairpin and the footprint. But the piece of paper remained an unsightly object. He could not forget how it had reminded him, if only for a moment, of the destroying dogs and the malevolent viper.