“Hit harder, mistress,” said the boy, with a chuckle; “that only tickles.”
“Oh!” cried Mary, in a burst of passion. “I did like you, Dummy, but you’re a nasty, ugly old thing;” and she subsided in her saddle, sobbing with vexation, while Dummy rounded his shoulders a little more, and plodded on in silence, with the pony’s shoes tapping the stony path, as it playfully kept on making little bites at different parts of the boy’s clothes.
“’Taren’t no use to be cross with me, mistress,” said the boy at last. “Can’t help it. You don’t know, and I do. S’pose he runs off again, and Master Mark says to me, ‘Why didn’t you lead her home?’ what am I to say?”
Mary sat gazing straight before her, and had to ride ignominiously back to the zigzags leading up to the top of the Black Tor, where she dismounted, and Dummy led the pony to its underground stable.
“I shan’t tell Master Mark,” said the boy to the pony, as he took off bridle and saddle; “and you can’t, Ugly; and she won’t neither, so nobody’ll never know.”
Chapter Eighteen.
Master Rayburn advises.
Captain Purlrose and his merry men had found a place just to their liking, where they lived like pigs in a hole of the earth, and as voraciously. He chuckled and crowed as they ate and drank, and waited till their stock of provisions began to grow low, and then started off upon a fresh expedition, to gather tribute, as he called it. He did not expose himself to any risks, but kept his ascendancy over his men by sheer cunning and ability in making his plans, leading them to where they could come quite unexpectedly upon some lonely cottage or farmhouse, ill-use and frighten the occupants nearly to death, adding insult to injury by loading the spoil of provisions, or whatever it pleased them to take, on the farmer’s horses, leading them away, and after unloading them at the cave, setting them adrift.