‘What spell?’ asked the miner.
‘What! have you forgotten the rhyme the dinky woman sang when she brought me to Mammie Trevisken—
‘By magic and Pail,
And the Skavarnak’s wail’?
‘I had clean forgotten,’ said Tom. ‘But I don’t s’pose it meant anything. P’r’aps the little body in the bal-bonnet didn’t know what she was singing.’
The miner went on his way to Ding Dong, and Ninnie-Dinnie seated herself on a bed of wild thyme close to where the hare had disappeared, and began calling very gently, but with great persistence:
‘Skavarnak! Skavarnak! come into the Magic Pail! Long-Eared! Long-Eared! come into my Pail!’
But nothing stirred in the bracken.
Long the child called—hours it seemed—until at last there was a movement under the great fronds of bracken, and out came a woebegone little hare and went into the Pail!
‘You are caught by the magic of the Old Men’s Pail at last,’ said Ninnie-Dinnie, with a strange look in her eye; and covering the Pail with her pinafore, she set her face homeward.