“Then why don’t the people who lose things follow the witches up, and see if they have taken them?”
“Follow ’em up, sir?” said Dummy, opening his eyes very widely. “They wouldn’t dare.”
Then came a day when, feeling dull and bitter and as if he were not enjoying himself at home, as he did the last time he was there, Mark mounted one of the stout cob ponies kept for his and his sister’s use, and went for a good long round, one which was prolonged so that it was getting toward evening, and the sun was peering over the shoulder of one of the western hills, when, throwing the rein on his cob’s neck, and leaving it to pick its own way among the stones of the moorland, he entered a narrow, waste-looking dale, about four miles from the Tor.
He felt more dull and low-spirited than when he started in the morning, probably from want of a good meal, for he had had nothing since breakfast, save a hunch of very cake-like bread and a bowl of milk at a cottage farm right up in the Peak, where he had rested his pony while it had a good feed of oats.
The dale looked desolation itself, in spite of the gilding of the setting sun. Stone lay everywhere: not the limestone of his own hills and cliffs, but grim, black-looking millstone-grit, which here and there formed craggy, forbidding outlines; and this did not increase his satisfaction with his ride, when he took up the rein and began to urge the cob on, to get through the gloomy place.
But the cob knew better than his master what was best, and refused to risk breaking its legs among the stones with which the moor was strewn.
“Ugh! you lazy fat brute,” cried Mark; “one might just as well walk, and— Who’s that?”
He shaded his eyes from the sun, and looked long and carefully at a figure a few hundred yards ahead till his heart began to beat fast, for he felt sure that it was Ralph Darley. Ten minutes after, he began to be convinced, and coming to a clearer place where there was a pretence of a bit of green sward, the cob broke into a canter of its own will, which brought its rider a good deal nearer to the figure trudging in the same direction. Then the cob dropped into a walk again, picking its way among great blocks of stone; and Mark was certain now that it was Ralph Darley, with creel on back, and rod over his shoulder, evidently returning from one of the higher streams after a day’s fishing.
Mark’s heart beat a little faster, and he nipped his cob’s sides; but the patient animal would not alter its steady walk, which was at about the same rate as the fisher’s, and consequently Mark had to sit and watch his enemy’s back, as, unconscious of his presence, Ralph trudged on homeward, with one arm across his back to ease up the creel, which was fairly heavy with the delicate burden of grayling it contained, the result of a very successful day.
“He has his sword on this time,” said Mark to himself, “and I’ve got mine.”