‘Have you found our lost purse yet?’ he asked. ‘The time for finding it is up the day after to-morrow.’
‘Whatever do you mean, little mister?’
‘What I say, and that your chance of being wealthy will be gone. Are you looking for the precious bag now?’
‘My Great-Grannie sent me and Gelert down here to look for it,’ said the child evasively. ‘Gelert is over there looking,’ again sending her glance across the bar, which was particularly beautiful to-day with reflected clouds.
‘I know he is, and he seems much more anxious to find the purse than you are. Perhaps our offer, great as it was, is not sufficiently tempting. If it isn’t’—looking keenly into the child’s sweet face—‘we will treble our reward. Three purses full of the Wee Folks’ golden money will we give you if you bring us the bag. It will be more than enough to buy all the land in your parish, including your own dear little cottage, should it ever be sold.’
‘Will it really?’ cried Gerna, deeply impressed, and for the first time in her innocent young life the desire to be rich came into her unselfish little soul.
‘Yes; and you will be a very great lady indeed,’ said the small Dark Man, with an evil laugh, seeing he had gained a point—‘greater even than Lady Sandys, who lives up at St. Minver Churchtown.’
He might have said many more things to entice the poor little maid’s envy; but just then a great voice above their heads startled them, and, looking up, Gerna saw Farmer Vivian on the top of Tristram, a hill facing Pentire Glaze.
The Spriggan took to his heels at once, and there was a helter-skelter amongst all the Little Men, whom she had not seen on the sands until then, and one and all rushed into Piskey Goog, as if a regiment of soldiers were after them.
Gelert continued his search for the purse until the sea flowed in again, and Gerna sat on a rock picturing to herself what the Churchtown folk would say to her when she bought all the land in the parish, and became a person of even greater importance than Lady Sandys. As she was enjoying all this wealth in anticipation, it suddenly rushed upon her at what price she would buy her riches—the happiness of a poor little helpless thing in a Spriggan’s prison—and she felt so ashamed of herself that the desire for gold died within her, and such pity for her little friend came in its place that she was now quite determined to take the bag over the bog country to the moor where the Tolmên was, cost her what it might.