There was a great to-do when the children’s friends learned what had happened, and there was bitter woe and lamentation when, after days and days of searching, the poor little souls could not be found.
A year went by, and all this time Betty, the child who had acted the ‘Mother’ in the game, never forgot her six little friends. They were seldom out of her thoughts, and she longed for a pair of wings to fly up the witch’s stairs; and the more she wanted wings, the more impossible they seemed to get.
One evening in the beginning of June—the very same day, as it happened, that she and her little companions had met together at the Witch’s Well to play the game—she was passing the well, when a little white dog ran out of a garden close by, and came and licked her shoes.
She was fond of dogs, and, as she patted it, to her amazement it began to talk to her just like a human being, which almost scared her out of her wits.
‘Please don’t be afraid of me,’ he said, wagging his stump of a tail as Betty backed into the hedge. ‘I am only a dog in shape. I was a little boy before the dreadful old Witch o’ the Well turned me into a dog, or what looks like a dog.’
‘Were you really a boy once? And do you know the Witch o’ the Well?’ asked Betty, trying to get over her fears in her interest in what he told her.
‘Alas, I do!’ answered the dog. ‘She is my mistress, and I have to follow her about all day long, and am never free of her except at night, when she is riding about on her broom. Then I have to haunt certain lanes to make silly superstitious people believe I am a ghost. The old Witch sent me to this lane a few days ago, and very glad I was, because I hoped to see you.’
‘Whatever for?’ asked Betty, still very much afraid of this strange dog, with his human-like voice.
‘Because I know your little friends Monday and the others.’