“Can you make clocks?” said Elfrida. “I thought it was only——”
“So it be,” said the witch. “I can’t make ’em, but I know them as can. And I’ve come ’ere to find you, ’cause you brought me the tea and sugar. I’ve got the wise eye, I have. I can see back and forth. I looked forrard and I saw ye, and I looked back and I saw what you’re seeking, and I know where the treasure is and——”
“But where did you get those clothes?” Edred asked; and it was a question he was afterwards to have reason to regret.
“Oh, clothes is easy come by,” said the witch. “If it was only clothes I could be a crowned queen this very minute.”
The children had a fleeting impression of seeing against the criss-cross fence of the potato patch a lady in crimson and ermine with a gold crown. They blinked, startled, and saw that there was no crimson and gold, only the dull clothes of the witch against the background of potato patch.
“And how did you get here?” Edred asked.
“That speckled hen of mine’s a-settin’ on the clock-face now,” she said. “I quieted her with a chalk-line drawn from her beak’s end straight out into the world of wonders. If she rouses up, then I’m back there, and I can’t never come back here, my dears, nor more than once, I can’t. So let’s make haste down to the Castle, and I’ll show you where my great granny see them put the treasure when she was a little gell.”
The three hurried down the steep-banked lane.
“Many’s the time,” the witch went on, “my granny pointed it out to me. It’s just alongside where——”
And then the witch was not there any more. Edred and Elfrida were alone in the lane. The speckled hen must have recovered from her “quieting,” and got off the clock.