double-barrelled sporting rifle for another.  The latter I have hired, but I have bought a dozen heavy game cartridges, which would bring down a rhinoceros.  Now I am ready for my troglodyte friend.  Give me better health and a little spate of energy, and I shall try conclusions with him yet.  But who and what is he?  Ah! there is the question which stands between me and my sleep.  How many theories do I form, only to discard each in turn!  It is all so utterly unthinkable.  And yet the cry, the footmark, the tread in the cavern—­no reasoning can get past these I think of the old-world legends of dragons and of other monsters.  Were they, perhaps, not such fairy-tales as we have thought?  Can it be that there is some fact which underlies them, and am I, of all mortals, the one who is chosen to expose it?

May 3.—­For several days I have been laid up by the vagaries of an English spring, and during those days there have been developments, the true and sinister meaning of which no one can appreciate save myself.  I may say that we have had cloudy and moonless nights of late, which according to my information were the seasons upon which sheep disappeared.  Well, sheep have disappeared.  Two of Miss Allerton’s, one of old Pearson’s of the Cat Walk, and one of Mrs. Moulton’s.  Four in all during three nights.  No trace is left of them at all, and the countryside is buzzing with rumours of gipsies and of sheep-stealers.

But there is something more serious than that.  Young Armitage has disappeared also.  He left his moorland cottage early on Wednesday night and has never been heard of since.  He was an unattached man, so there is less sensation than would otherwise be the case.  The popular explanation is that he owes money, and has found a situation in some other part of the country, whence he will presently write for his belongings.  But I have grave misgivings.  Is it not much more likely that the recent tragedy of the sheep has caused him to take some steps which may have ended in his own destruction?  He may, for example, have lain in wait for the creature and been carried off by it into the recesses of the mountains.  What an inconceivable fate for a civilized Englishman of the twentieth century!  And yet I feel that it is possible and even probable.  But in that case, how far am I answerable both for his death and for any other mishap which may occur?  Surely with the knowledge I already possess it must be my duty to see that something is done, or if necessary to do it myself.  It must be the latter, for this morning I went down to the local police-station and told my story.  The inspector entered it all in a large book and bowed me out with commendable gravity, but I heard a burst of laughter before I had got down his garden path.  No doubt he was recounting my adventure to his family.

June 10.—­I am writing this, propped up in bed, six weeks after my last entry in this journal.  I have gone through a terrible shock both to mind and body, arising from such an experience as has seldom befallen a human being before.  But I have attained my end.  The danger from the Terror which dwells in the Blue John Gap has passed never to return.  Thus much at least I, a broken invalid, have done for the common good.  Let me now recount what occurred as clearly as I may.