Very rapidly, Hamish the Hermit became exceedingly vexed by these hangers-on and he resolved to rid himself of them by hiding as soon as he saw them coming. Eventually, thanks to his hard work, the flow of acolytes making pilgrimages to his door ceased and he found himself in blissful isolation. His ambition for unpopularity was splendidly fulfilled as he received the dubious honour accorded to all figures of his day who attained the finest notoriety: he became a local bogeyman. ‘Don’t be greedy,’ mothers would warn their little bairns, ‘or The Hermit will get you.’ Living where he did, he was assumed to be in league with the malevolent imps and goblins, and people grew to avoid him as if he carried the plague. Vicars, particularly the Reverend Hugh Worthing, who presided over the parish for half a century, regularly denounced him from the pulpit, and there was a proposal to drive him out of the area altogether; the motion, however, was defeated at a meeting of the Parish Council by a show of nine hands to six.

He lived on the hill for a total of seventy-three years before he died. For almost the whole of this time he interacted with no other humans, but he did have several friends in the animal world. There was a red squirrel, which he called Fiery and which became tame enough to eat from his hand. There was a woodpecker, which he called Chipper and which would answer when he whistled to it. There was a bat, which he called Vamp and which used to keep him company in the evenings. There were colonies of lice, which were pedicularly happy playing in his matted hair. There was also a tapeworm, of the existence of which he was unaware, but which was primarily responsible for his alarming loss of weight in his final months.