‘Of course you can’t,’ laughed the witch. ‘Sticks under three feet of snow are as difficult to find as a furze-needle in a wainload of hay. It will comfort you to know that you won’t find even a stick, and that before the north wind has turned his back on the downs, the Wise Woman will have died of the cold, and you will cry your eyes out for wings to fly up my stairs!’ And cackling and jeering, she disappeared, and Betty saw a gray hare running away over the snow down to Music Water, now as silent as the downs themselves.
The little maid was returning to the hut with an icicle of despair at her heart, when a white dog ran across her path, and looking down, she saw it was Pincher, the witch’s dog.
‘Don’t let what my bad old mistress said distress you,’ he cried, licking Betty’s cold little hand. ‘She does not want you to look for sticks, and came here on purpose to prevent you. She is quite as anxious that the Wise Woman should die as you and I are for her to live. She is as clever as she is vile, and she knows that a woman over a hundred could not possibly live long in awful weather like this unless she has a good fire to keep her warm.’
‘But why does she want the Wise Woman to die?’ asked the little maid.
‘Because she fears the wisdom of her long years can help you to fly up her stairs. And this fear brought her to Bogee Down to-day. She made me come with her, which is fortunate; for poking about whilst she was talking to you, I discovered a great faggot of wood dry as a bone, and under it a pile of peat.’
‘Where?’ Betty asked eagerly.
‘Close to the hut under a hedge,’ answered the dog. ‘And if you will allow me I’ll come and help you to get it out. The witch is so happy in her belief that she has discouraged you from looking for sticks that she won’t miss me yet.’
And he led the way to the side of the hut, where, under a tangle of brambles, Betty saw a huge bundle of sticks, dry and brown.
They set to work with a will—she with her eager young hands, he with his strong white teeth—and soon got it out from under the hedge and into the hut, where, to their distress, they found the Wise Woman lying face down on the hearthstone, apparently lifeless.
Betty, girl-like, began to sob, believing the poor old woman was dead, which made Pincher quite angry, and he told her with a growl to put off her weeping till a more convenient time, and see if she could not kindle a fire with the sticks they had brought, whilst he tried to lick life back into her poor old body.