The tales grew like snowballs, as they passed from mouth to mouth, but for the most part they were very unsubstantial in all points save one, and that possessed substance; not only lambs, but sheep, had disappeared, and in the case of a miner and his wife, who lived some distance off, and who had been away for a week to a wedding beyond the mountains, they returned to their solitary cottage to find that it had been entered in their absence, and completely stripped of everything movable, even to the bed, while the very cabbages in the garden had been torn up and carried away.
Mark had the news from the man himself, and he carried it to his father and sister, as he had carried Dummy Rugg’s rumour about the witches and their fire, which went out so suddenly on being seen.
“Humph!” said Sir Edward, smiling; “that looks as if the witches liked vegetables with their lamb and mutton. Stripped the cottage, and took the meal-tub too?”
“Everything, father,” said Mark.
“Then it’s time the men made a search, my boy,” said Sir Edward; “we must have a robber about. There is the whole explanation of the old women’s tales. Well, they will have to bestir themselves, and catch the thief.”
It was on that same morning that the news reached Cliff Castle, where similar stories had floated about witches and warlocks having taken possession of the shivering hills, where the slatey rocks were always falling, and forming what the country people called screes, which, at a distance, when wet and shiny, looked in the sunshine like cascades descending from on high.
“If it comes to any of our sheep being taken, we shall have to take to a hunt, Ralph,” Sir Morton had said. “The people like to have a witch or two to curdle their blood, but I’m not going to find them in sheep.”
It was a glorious morning, and the lad went into the courtyard with his sister to have a look at her new fad, as Nick Garth called it, that is to say, the well-plastered pool with its surrounding of rock-work, in which various plants were beginning to flourish and reflect themselves in the crystal water with which the little pond was filled.
“Capital!” cried Ralph; “but you ought to have a few fish in it. They’d look well.”
“That is just what I wanted you to say, sir,” cried Minnie, clapping her hands; “and if you hadn’t been such a solemn, serious brother, you would have taken your rod and line, and caught me a few.”