Betty wanted terribly to ask the Wise Woman who beside herself would help her to get wings, but she dared not ask a single question, and felt it was very hard she could not.
Before the day had closed in, the bitter north wind, which was accompanied by snow, had come. It broke over the downs in great fury, and made the poor old woman shiver over her fire with the misery of it. The next day and the next it blew, and the more it blew, and the faster it snowed, the more the ancient dame shivered and shook; and all day long she kept Betty busy piling up dry furze on the hearth, till there was none left to put.
When she realized that all her winter store of peat and firewood was burnt, she moaned, and said she was sure she should die of the cold.
‘And if I die,’ she added sadly, ‘the witch, like the north wind, will have it all her own way, and you will never be able to fly up her terrible stairs.’
This distressed the poor little maid very much; for she had become quite fond of the Wise Woman, and wanted her to live for her own sake as well as for Monday’s, Tuesday’s, and the others’.
When the fuel was all burnt, and the Wise Woman too cold even to shiver, Betty said that when it stopped snowing she would go out on the downs and look for something to burn; and when it stopped she went.
The downs were many feet deep under the snow, and there was not a furze-brake nor a hillock to be seen anywhere; and the down opposite was as smooth as a sheet spread out on grass to dry.
As Betty was searching for wood, and could not find even a stick, a hare came speeding over the snow from Crackrattle. She watched it till it crossed over to Bogee, and saw, to her surprise, that it was making straight for her. When it drew near it stopped, with eyes that made her think of the witch’s eyes, and as it gazed, the hare disappeared, and in its place stood the old witch herself, steeple-hat and all!
Betty was dreadfully frightened, and before she could rush back to the hut, the witch had come quite close to her, and asked her what she was doing out there in the cold.
‘Looking for firewood for the poor old Wise Woman’s fire,’ answered Betty. ‘And I can’t see any,’ she added sadly.