Suddenly the clouds parted westward, and Pendoggat could see Ger Tor outlined against a liverish patch of night sky. By the same light he saw Peter; and his madness departed, and he became a coward, when he caught a glimpse of the little man's malignant eyes. Peter was his enemy for ever, and he knew it. Neither of them had spoken a word. Pendoggat had growled and spluttered; Peter had choked and mumbled; the river far beneath roared because it was full of rain. These were all incoherent noises. Pendoggat began to slink away, as if he had received the beating, shivering and looking back, but seeing nothing except a dull little heap beside the wall, which seemed to have many hands, all of them scrabbling in the dirt. Peter panted hard, as if he had been hunted across the moor by the whist hounds, and had come there to take shelter; but all the time he went on scraping up the clay, gathering it into a ball, spitting on it, moulding it, and muttering madly from time to time: "You'm him! You'm him!" During those first few moments, after leaving that horrible little man beneath the wall scrabbling with his hands, Pendoggat swore solemnly that he would make Thomasine his wife, swore it to himself, to the God that he believed in, and to her, if only nothing happened. Presently Peter went on towards his home; and in his arms was a fantastic little thing of clay, a thing forked and armed like a human being, a sort of doll. When he got back he cleared the hearthstone, blew the peat into a red smoulder with his mouth, then took the doll, spoke to it solemnly, placed it upon the hottest part of the hearth, and piled the red embers round it. When Mary came in to call him to supper she found Peter sitting in a kind of trance before the hearthstone, and following his gaze she saw the quaint clay doll sitting upright in the centre of the fire, with the red peat gathered into a fiery little hell around it on every side. "Aw, Peter!" she gasped in a tremulous whisper, falling on her knees at his side. "Who be the mommet, Peter? Who be the mommet?" "Varmer Pendoggat," said Peter. CHAPTER XVII ABOUT PASTIMES