Jim stopped talking and listened. Carried on the wind they could hear, outside in the distance, the tramping of the column coming up across the moors. Beth sat silent on one of the chairs by the dining table; unable to take in or even begin to comprehend all that she had just heard. She shook with fear; suddenly the night seemed very cold and she began to shiver.

‘But you,’ she said. ‘Why did you let us in and help us if we are the carriers of this plague?’ She began to cry and she buried her face in her hands. Jim put his arm round her gently.

‘Come on, don’t cry. There are many who don’t believe it; even in these parts, that we know of, and over the whole world there must be many more. Before the disease started, they were messing around a lot, experimenting with different kinds of weapons; germ warfare and so on. We’ve always thought that something went wrong at one of the places where this research was being done but of course no one will admit it and they’ve blamed it on you. You are the scapegoats. They may not even know anything has gone wrong themselves and so they really believe you are the cause. I don’t know.’ He paused again. ‘Listen, Beth, you must all go now. While there’s still time. The place that you want, I think, is what we call Rengoll’s Tor. There’s an old legend that I heard from my grandfather that the mountain elves live there. Follow the path straight up; it cuts through a cleft between two large hills at the top and then straight ahead you’ll see, some way ahead but still easily spotted, a strange collection of large rocks leaning against one another and sticking out of the earth at odd angles. It’s on top of a large mound and to get to it, it’s about half a day’s walk through rough moorland country, but it’s quite flat so you’ve not got much more climbing to do. Come on; you must go out the back way. There’s less chance of being seen.’

‘Here,’ said Ivy, ‘take this; and think of us when you look at it.' She took off a beautiful little gold ring with a deep green stone set in the top, which Beth had noticed and admired when they had been cooking last night’s meal. ‘And here is something for the journey,’ she added, passing Nab a bag full of sandwiches and fruit. ‘I packed it last night, ready for this morning.’

They were at the back door now. Jim opened it and they felt the cold night air on their faces.

‘Are you sure you won’t come with us?’ Beth said, but they both shook their heads.

‘Don’t you worry about us,’ said Jim. ‘We’ll be all right. Now, off you go. Take care and good luck.’

Beth kissed them both goodbye sadly. Ivy gave Nab a quick hug and Jim grasped both his hands in his, in what Nab realized was a gesture of affection.

‘Goodbye. Thank you,’ said the boy and then resolutely they turned their backs on the little house where they had been so happy and started to run steadily and slowly up the path through the heather following Warrigal, Brock and Perryfoot. Beth did not dare look back, for if she had, she knew she would have burst into tears and it would have been impossible to leave. Jim and Ivy watched them go, their eyes misty and damp with emotion, and then when the darkness had swallowed them up they turned and went back in the house.

‘You know what to do?’ said Jim, for they had discussed this last night.

‘Yes,’ Ivy replied, and she started barricading all the doors and windows with furniture while Jim nailed battens of wood across them on the outside, both for extra strength and, more important, to make it appear obvious that the cottage had been barricaded.

At just about the same moment that Nab, Beth and the animals arrived at the top of the path and began making their way through the little valley between the hills that Jim had described, the Urkku reached the cottage. Because of what they saw, they assumed, as Jim and Ivy had intended, that the travellers were inside so they immediately surrounded it and began trying to bargain with Jim and Ivy to make them hand them over. It must have been at least half an hour before Jeff and the other leaders lost their patience and began more direct methods of persuasion. Hearing the bleats from the goat shed they first of all dragged Amy out and killed her and then, when Jim still refused to release his guests, they killed Jessie, only more slowly so that every whimper and cry of pain shot through Jim and Ivy like a red hot poker in their stomachs and tortured them with doubt and anguish.

When that proved no more successful, and another half-hour had been wasted, they began to break in through the doors and windows until finally, after yet more precious time, the Urkku, having smashed their way in and searched in every corner and cupboard in the house, realized that they had been tricked. Their anger was horrible, and cruel were the deaths they inflicted on the old couple and yet, even as they died, their faces were fixed with such an expression of confidence and contentment that those who killed them, and all those who witnessed their deaths, were frightened deep within at the force that could inspire such strength.

The hounds by now had picked up the scent at the back of the house and were straining at their leashes to get away up the path, barking and yelping in a bedlam of noise. Many of the Urkku, having looted the house for anything of value, were now packing hay from one of the outbuildings around the outside walls and inside in the kitchen. Then coals from the fire, still red-hot from last night, were gathered in a bucket and scattered over the hay, which flared up immediately into high crackling flames that danced and flickered against the walls in the early dawn. Soon the flames were leaping over the roof and, by the time the column of Urkku, led by the hounds, was halfway up the back slope, the little house had been almost completely consumed by the fire.

By dusk that day the animals found themselves standing at the foot of the mound on top of which the strange rocks of Rengoll’s Tor loomed large and mysterious; casting strange shadows on the ground around them as the sun, yellow, weak and watery in a cold autumn sky, started to go down behind the mountains. The earth and the heather all around them smelt damp and mist hung in the air so that the sounds of barking which had been behind them all day now seemed muffled and remote. Nab and Beth had thought of the old couple as they jogged steadily along the track towards the Tor which Jim had described, and a terrible sense of foreboding had come upon them once or twice as they travelled but it had quickly been pushed aside; the thought of anything happening to them had been too awful to contemplate. Once, as the path took them on to the top of a small ridge, Beth had even believed that she could smell smoke on the wind but she immediately put it down to imagination or the fires in the distant lowlands.

They had no idea how far behind them the Urkku were. Soon after dawn they had seen them coming through the little valley between the two hills at the top of the slope but they had not seen them since; nor had they been seen for the cover was good and the path had run for much of the way alongside a little mountain brook which cut its way deep into the earth leaving banks of rich dark peat on either side through which the tangled roots of the heather stuck out and in which cotton grass grew.

They had stopped for a very short break around Sun-High and eaten Ivy’s packed lunch, which had tasted delicious and made them feel as if they could go on running for ever. Now, however, Beth felt tired again; she had not really recovered fully from her exhausted state, and the fact that she was soaked to the skin again because of the damp mist made her feel worse. At her side Brock suddenly gave a frantic shake in an attempt to get rid of the large droplets of water which the mist had deposited all over his coat. They were staring at the huge rocks and wondering, now they were here, how they would go about finding the mountain-elves when suddenly they heard a sound from way above them. It was a high plaintive tune, the notes of which floated down to them on the wind almost as if it was being played by the breeze itself.