A Pixy in Petticoats by John Trevena

More than a month passed before Burrough heard anything of Beatrice. During that time he worked as hard as he could. His days were singularly monotonous. The morning he occupied at his writing-table, trying to project himself into the stone age. He walked in the afternoon upon the moor, or to little Blissland, or through the copse where the flowers were beginning to fail. Beside the river the pink seed-pods of the asphodels announced autumn, and the red sundews were sinking in the bogs. The early evening he spent with prehistoric men in their hut circles; and then he sat by a peat fire, pipe in mouth, and thinking hard.

Peter had never come back. He had been seen returning, weak and thin, from a hunting expedition by Willum; and the scholar, recognising Burrough's only companion, had put up his gun with a malicious twinkle in his foxy eyes and destroyed poor Peter. Burrough saw nobody except the moorman's wife, who came in twice a week to clean up; and he was thinking seriously of disposing of her upon economic grounds. He had interviewed the doctor with a view to ascertaining whether his state of health would justify a return to London life, and the answer had been discouraging. For another two years at least it would be advisable for him to remain and harden upon the moor.