In the
framing device for the story, a woman tells her grandchildren that if they sit quietly and avoid waking their father she will take them to pick
blackberries the next day. After her grandson says that the best blackberries are to be found "in the little lane that goes up past Collins's cottage", she tells him he must never pick blackberries in that lane. When the children ask why not, she tells them a story which her mother had told her. Long ago a man named Davis had lived in a cottage on the lane. Davis was independently wealthy, and did not associate with the other people of the parish. One day, a young man moved into his cottage; the relationship between the two being unclear. The two men are known to roam around the
downland and woods late at night and early in the morning, and regularly visit a
hill figure, camping there overnight during the summer. When the
squire remarks that the hillside must be lonely during the night, the young man replies "we don't want for company at such times". Davis speculates that the
barrows on the down predate
Roman Britain. Around three years later, a woodcutter finds the body of the young man hanging from an oak tree in a clearing deep in the woods, dressed in a white gown and with a bloody hatchet at his feet. When a party led by the
parson go to retrieve the body, they find an old-looking "little ornament like a
wheel" hanging on a chain round its neck. A boy is sent to Davis' cottage to notify him, but is found lying in the village street. When the horse on which the body is being transported nears Davis' cottage it rears with fear, throwing the body to the ground. When the party carry the young man's body into the cottage, they find Davis' body lying on a table bound with linen bands, with an axe wound in the chest which has split the
sternum. Searching the house, they find
sleeping potions in the cottage; it is surmised that the young man drugged and murdered Davis, then killed himself out of remorse. Papers found in the cottage suggest that the men were guilty of
idolatry. The residents of the parish are unwilling to have Davis and the young man given a
christian burial in the
consecrated ground of the
churchyard; it is agreed to bury the two men at a
crossroads. While the bodies are being transported, gouts of blood from Davis' body fall to the ground, leaving large, bloodstained patches on the lane. The next day, the squire rides past the lane and finds that the patches of blood are covered with large black flies. The squire orders that the patches be covered with clean earth from the churchyard. As the (consecrated) earth is thrown onto the blood, the flies disperse in a solid cloud, eliciting from the old
sexton the remark "
Lord of flies". The squire arranges for the cottage and its contents to be burned. Following these events, people claim to see the ghosts of Davis and the young man in the wood and in the lane, particularly in the spring and autumn. One March evening, when the grandmother and her future husband have strayed inadvertently on to the lane while out
courting, she is bitten on the back of her hand by a large black fly of an unusual kind, causing her hand and arm to swell up painfully. A
"wise man" from a nearby village visits and cures her hand; remarking that "When the sun's gathering his strength [...] and when he's in the height of it, and when he's beginning to lose his hold, and when he's in his weakness, them that haunts about that lane had best to take heed to themselves." The grandmother hears of other people suffering similar incidents, but notes they are growing less frequent. The story closes with the grandmother sending the children to bed, telling them "that's the reason [why] I won’t have you gathering me blackberries, no, nor eating them either, in that lane; and now you know all about it, I don’t fancy you'll want to yourself." == Publication ==