When they had had breakfast, and the hut was cleaned with fresh scouring-sand, the Wise Woman asked her, if she had the chance of being made into a bird, what little bird would she like to be.
‘A thrush,’ said Betty. ‘I should love to be a little thrush, because it sings so sweetly in the dawn.’
‘It is a good choice,’ cried the Wise Woman—‘the best you could have made. Now go down to Trevillador Wood, and every thrush you see in it, ask him to give you a feather for Love’s sake.’
‘I do not know where Trevillador Wood is,’ said the child, ‘nor the way thither.’
‘It is in a valley in Little Petherick,’ returned the Wise Woman. ‘It is not a great way from here, and easy to find if you follow a little brown stream from Crackrattle, that runs down through the valley to the wood. Crackrattle is away there, on Trevibban Down,’ pointing to the opposite down, which was only separated from Bogee by a narrow road. ‘By going up across Trevibban you will soon get to Crackrattle. Now go, my dear, and go quickly.’ And Betty went.
The child was ever so thankful to be out of doors again, after having been cooped up in the hut for so many months, particularly as it was the birds’ singing-time. Birds were singing everywhere on the downs, and their music gushed from furze-brake, from thorn-bush and alder; and when she came to Music Water she heard linnets fluting, and sweet wild notes came from budding willows by the side of the rippling stream. Larks were also singing—lark answering lark with such wonderful melody in the blue upper air that she told herself she had never heard such lovely sounds before.
The downs, in spite of all the bird-music, were not so beautiful nor so full of colour as when she came to stay with the Wise Woman. They were now as brown as Piskey-purses, she said, and only lightened here and there by granite boulders, where they caught the rays of the sun, by yellow gorse, and splashes of silver lichen.
It did not take the girl very long to cross Music Water’s full stream to reach the road that parted the two downs; but it took her some time to get to Crackrattle, as the way up to it was thick with brambles and furze.
When she drew near that part of the down which commanded a grand view of the country and sea as far up as Tintagel, she turned her gaze towards Padstow Town, and saw the river twisting in and out of the hills on its way out to the open sea. She also saw the two great headlands, Stepper Point and Pentire, that guarded the entrance to Padstow harbour in that far-away sixteenth century, as they do to-day, and her glimpse of them and the blue river seemed to bring her home quite close to her; and when she reached Crackrattle stream, she followed it down the long, deep valley with a happy heart.
When she came to a wood, which she was sure in her mind was Trevillador Wood, she heard the thrushes singing and filling the place with music. Every cock thrush was doing his very best to out-sing his brother thrush. It was mating-time, and each little songster in speckled grey was trying to win a little mate by his song.