At one time Talland owned a shuddery reputation in all this country-side, and people in the farmhouses told, with many a fearful glance over their shoulders, of the uncanny creatures that nightly haunted the churchyard. Devils, wraiths, and fearful apparitions made the spot a kind of satanic parliament; and we may be amply sure that these horrid stories lost no accent or detail of terror by constant repetition in those inglenooks on winter evenings. This is not to say that other places round about were innocent of things supernatural; for those were times when every Cornish glen, moor, stream, and hill had their bukkadhus, their piskies, and gnomes of sorts, good and evil; but the infernal company that consorted together in Talland churchyard was entirely beside these old-established creatures. They were _hors concours_, as the French would say: they formed a class by themselves; and, in the expressive slang of to-day, they were “the Limit,” the _ne plus ultra_ of militant ghostdom. People rash enough to take the church-path through Talland after night had fallen were sure to hear and see strange semi-luminous figures; and they bethought them then of the at once evil and beneficent reputation owned and really enjoyed by Parson Dodge, the eccentric clergyman of Talland, who was reputed an exorcist of the first quality. He it was who, doughty wrestler with the most obstinate spectres, found himself greatly in demand in a wide geographical area for the banishing of troublesome ghosts for a long term of years to the Red Sea; but it was whispered, on the other hand, that he kept a numerous band of diabolic familiars believed by the simple folk of that age to resort nightly to the vicarage for their orders, and then to do his bidding. These were the spiteful creatures, thought the country people, who, to revenge themselves for this servitude, lurked in the churchyard, and got even with mankind by pinching and smacking and playing all manner of scurvy tricks upon those who dared pass this way under cover of night. Uncle Zack Chowne even got a black eye by favour of these inimical agencies, one exceptionally dark night when, coming home-along this way, under the influence of spirits not of supernatural origin, he met a posse of fiends, and, in the amiable manner of the completely intoxicated, insisted upon their adjourning with him to the nearest inn, “jush for shake of ole timesh.” In fact, he made the sad mistake of taking the fiends in question for friends, and addressed them by name: with the result that he got a sledge-hammer blow in what the prize-fighting brotherhood used to call “the peeper.” [Picture: The Devils of Talland]