‘I’ve never clapt eyes on her since she went out with ’ee this morning!’ cried Joan, greatly distressed. ‘I do hope nothing has happened to her. Perhaps she has been an’ gone an’ tumbled down into one of the Old Men’s workings[17] out there on the moor.’
Tom went as white as a sheet at the bare thought of the possibility, and he started off at once to look for the child, leaving his poor wife more troubled than she had ever been since Ninnie-Dinnie came.
He was gone a little over an hour, when, to Joan’s thankfulness, he returned with the child.
He found her, he said, not far from the beaten track, sitting at the foot of a carn waiting for him to come for her.
She told him she had lost her way, and that as she was sitting on the griglans,[18] an ugly little man with long ears like a Skavarnak[19] came up to her, and because she was afraid of him and would not go into his little house under the carn, he was very angry. She did not know what would have happened to her if a little old woman in a sunbonnet had not come along just then, and took her to the place where Tom found her. She told her to sit where she was till Daddie Trebisken came to fetch her, which he would be sure to do after sunset. In the mean-time she was to say her own name backwards seven times if the Long-Eared came near her again. She also told her that Ninnie-Dinnie, if she cared to believe it, was her real name spelt backwards with an ‘n’ left out; and she said she must never go out on the lonely moors without taking the Pail, made out of old Cornish tin, with her.
It was ever so long before Joan got over her fright about Ninnie-Dinnie, and for weeks she would not hear of her going out on the moors. But, as time deadens all things, she got over her nervousness, and when April came, and the broom and the gorse were in flower, making the great brown moor yellow-gold, and scenting all the air with peach-like fragrance, she was willing that the little maid should go with her husband once more. And Tom willingly took her.
As they were going out of the door, something fell on the Pail standing on the dresser, and the child, remembering the injunction of the little old woman about the Pail, turned back to get it.
‘What shall I bring ’ee home, Mammie Trebisken?’ she asked, looking at her foster-mother; and Joan, hearing the lark singing faintly in the distance, replied laughingly:
‘You shall bring me home a pailful of lark’s music, my dear.’
‘You do knaw the little maid can’t bring ’ee that,’ cried Tom impatiently. ‘I should think she was all the music you wanted now.’