But still the gentleman made no reply.
“My dear Master,” she said again, “My! but you’re a fine-looking man! How upright you sit on your horse! But why don’t you answer me? Are you asleep? One would think you were taking a nap; and your horse, too, it is standing so still!”
Not having any word in reply to this fine speech, Kate called out as loud as she could: “Even if you are a gentleman-born, you needn’t be so stuck-up that you won’t speak to a poor body afoot!”
Still he never spoke, though Kate thought that she saw him wink at her.
This vexed her the more. “The time was when the Tregeers were among the first in the parish, and were buried with the gentry! Wake up and speak to me!” screamed she in a rage. And then she took up a stone, and threw it at the horse. The stone rolled back to her feet, and the animal did not even whisk its tail.
Kate now got nearer, and saw that the rider had no hat on, nor was there any hair on his bald head. She touched the horse, and felt nothing but a bunch of furze. She rubbed her eyes and saw at once, to her great astonishment, that it was no gentleman and horse at all, only a smooth stone half buried in a heap of furze. And there she was still far away from Pendeen, with her heavy basket, and her legs so tired that she could scarcely move. And then she saw that she had come a short distance only, and knew that she must be bewitched.
Well, on she went; and seeing a light at her left hand she thought that it shone from the window of a house where she might rest awhile. So she made for it straight across the moor, floundering through bogs, and tripping over bunches of furze. And still the light was always just ahead, and it seemed to move from side to side. Then suddenly it went out, and she was left standing in a bog. The next minute she found herself among furze-ricks and pigsties, in the yard of Farmer Boslow, miles away from Pendeen.
She opened the door of an old outhouse, and entered, hoping to get a few hours’ rest. There she lay down on straw and fell asleep; but she was soon wakened by some young pigs who were rooting around in the straw. That was too much for Kate. So up she got, and as she did so she heard the noise of a flail. And seeing a glimmer of light in a barn near by, she crept softly to a little window in the barn, and peeped to find what was going on.
At first she could see only two rush-wicks burning in two old iron lamps. Then through the dim light she saw the slash-flash of a flail as it rose and fell, and beat the barn floor. She stood on tiptoes, and stuck her head in farther, and whom did she see, wielding the flail, but a little old man, about three feet high, with hair like a bunch of rushes, and ragged clothes. His face was broader than it was long, and he had great owl-eyes shaded by heavy eyebrows from which his nose poked like a pig’s snout. Kate noticed that his teeth were crooked and jagged, and that at each stroke of the flail, he kept moving his thin lips around and around, and thrusting his tongue in and out. His shoulders were broad enough for a man twice his height, and his feet were splayed like a frog’s.
“Well! Well!” thought Kate. “This is luck! To see the Piskey threshing! For ever since I can remember I have heard it said that the Piskey threshed corn for Farmer Boslow on winter nights, and did other odd jobs for him the year round. But I would not believe it. Yet here he is!”