“I hear ’e. What’s the business? I be comin’ to ’e if you’ll bide wheer you be.”
That some eyes were watching him out of the gathering darkness he did not doubt, and soon pushing back, he stood once more in the ruined citadel of old stones, mounted one, steadied himself by a young ash that rose beside it, and raised his voice again,—
“Now, then! I be here. What’s to do? Who’s callin’ me?”
An answer came, but of a sort widely different from what he expected. There arose, within twenty yards of him, a sound that might have been the cry of a child or the scream of a trapped animal. Assuming it to be the latter, Will again hesitated. Often enough he had laughed at the folk-tales of witch hares as among the most fantastic fables of the old; yet at this present moment mystic legends won point from the circumstances in which he found himself. He hurried forward to the edge of a circle from which the sound proceeded. Then, looking before him, he started violently, sank to his knees behind a rock, and so remained, glaring into the ring of stones.
In less than half an hour Blanchard, with his coat wrapped round some object that he carried, returned to Newtake and summoned assistance with a loud voice.
Presently his wife and mother entered the kitchen, whereupon Will discovered his burden and revealed a young child. Phoebe fainted dead away at sight of it, and while her husband looked to her Mrs. Blanchard tended the baby, which was hungry but by no means alarmed. As for Will, his altered voice and most unusual excitement of manner indicated something of the shock he had received. Having described the voice which called him, he proceeded after this fashion to detail what followed:
“I looked in the very hut-circle I was born, an’ I shivered all over, for I thought ’twas the li’l ghost of our wee bwoy—by God, I did! It sat theer all alone, an’ I stared an’ froze while I stared. Then it hollered like a gude un, an’ stretched out its arms, an’ I seed ’twas livin’ an’ never thought how it comed theer. He ’in somethin’ smaller than our purty darling, yet like him in a way, onless I’m forgetting.”
“’Tis like,” said Damaris, dandling the child and making it happy. “’Tis a li’l bwoy, two year old or more, I should guess. It keeps crying ’Mam, mam,’ for its mother. God forgive the woman.”
“A gypsy’s baby, I reckon,” said Phoebe languidly.
“I doan’t think it,” answered her husband; “I’m most feared to guess what ’tis. Wan thing’s sure; I was called loud an’ clear or I’d never have turned back; an’ yet, second time I was called, my flesh crept.”