The next night at dusk she returned again with the bags full of water.
"Ha! ha! I stole it," said she to Jill. "A bag here, and a bag there. They won't like it when they wake up to-morrow and find they have no water to wash in and precious little water to drink." She ground her iron teeth together and laughed again.
As before, Jill had to take the bags down to the vault, empty them in the casks, and get a further supply of bags for the next day. And so it went on for a year and a day.
At the end of that time the numberless casks in the vault were all full; the last to be filled being those labelled "Drinking-water Possible," and "Reservoirs Old Fruity."
On the last evening the old Witch was in high spirits. "You have worked well, my pretty dear," she said to Jill. "Go home now and enjoy yourself," and she approached Jill as if to kiss her. But Jill fled out of the door and through the gate-posts on to the hill outside.
She had never been outside the Witch's cottage since the day she came, but she had often thought of the village street as she had seen it last—cool and green and shady, with the babbling stream and chattering ducks at the foot of the hill.
When she got outside the fence she stopped suddenly.
What had happened to the village?
It looked brown and baked and dusty. The sun was intolerably hot. There was not a field to be seen, nothing but a wide dreary desert of sand stretching on either side of the sun-baked houses. A few rotting stumps by the roadside told where once the shady trees had been. As Jill went slowly down the hill she looked into the little dried-up yards that had once been gardens. Oh, how dusty it was! The stream had disappeared, some bleaching bones told of the poor ducks' fate.