After much searching, she found the stone of curious shape wrapped in soft leather, which her old friend said she could use to rub the stone with.
Betty again set to work with a will, but rub as hard as she could, no rubbing seemed to affect the blackness of the stone, and at the end of a week it seemed blacker than ever. She was much troubled at this, and the Wise Woman, who read her thoughts, told her not to despair, as its blacker blackness was a sign that all would be well, and that she was in a fair way of getting wings to fly up the witch’s stairs.
‘How?’ was on Betty’s lips, but a warning look from the Wise Woman’s wonderful bright eyes made the question die unspoken.
For many a week longer the girl rubbed the sable stone—patiently and quietly most of the time, but there were days when she felt like throwing the stone out of the window and running away home to her mother. But pity for her poor little friends shut up in the witch’s chamber made her persevere with her task.
One day, when she was almost worn out with rubbing, she saw a faint glow come into the stone, which, as she rubbed harder and quicker than ever, grew brighter and brighter, until it lay in her hand as red as a poppy.
‘The stone is all afire!’ she cried, taking it to the Wise Woman.
‘It is the colour of life at last,’ said the ancient dame, gazing at it with her wonderful bright eyes; ‘and another spell loosened to the witch’s undoing,’ she muttered, half to herself. And noticing that Betty was listening with all her ears, she told the child to look in the settle for a box, and when she had found it to put it on the table and lay the stone within it.
There was only one box in the settle, which, though small, was most exquisitely carved all over with wings—wing interlacing wing—and as Betty set it on the table and put the stone into it, she thought she had never seen such a lovely box.
The next morning, when she awoke, she saw the Wise Woman at the door of the hut with the stone in her hand, and she heard her chanting: ‘Go the way thy sisters went—the way of the west wind, and ask the King of the Wee Folk to give thee permission to help in the undoing of an evil wrought by the Witch o’ the Well;’ and Betty, staring with all her eyes, saw the ancient dame fling the stone out on to the down, along which it rolled at a rapid rate, burning as it went with a rosy splendour. It went the way the feathers had gone.
Betty dressed quickly, and busied herself about the hut, to keep herself from asking if the stone was really a stone, for she did not believe it was, and she ached to know.