Cats seem cruel; but it is just their nature, and perhaps they are no worse than human beings. Anyhow, pussy to-day had returned from the forest with two baby hedgehogs; she had killed them both, and now kept one safely between her forelegs until she should finish eating the other. And Joe chose to be very nasty and sarcastic about it, though of course she wasn't bound to go and catch young hedgehogs for him. He stood, showing an attitude of impudent grace, some two feet from her.
'Joe's cross! Joe's cross!' he cried. 'Ho, ho, ho! Set you up indeed! Joe's very cross!' He was looking at her with one evil eye. But pussy took no heed. Her tail was spread right out behind her carelessly enough, and now Joe took one long hop towards it and gave a cruel pinch. This was too much for any respectable cat to stand; and, just as Joe was holding back his head to laugh, puss sprang at him and gave him a box on the ear that sent him spinning round like a feathered whirlwind. Then the cat went back to resume the feast.
'Hallo! Why, where is the other hedgehog?'
Not echo, but Tod Lowrie could have answered 'where?' But he didn't. He had swallowed it, and Joe was high up in a tree now, laughing that wicked laugh of his—sarcastic, almost sardonic—'Ha, ha, ha!' and 'Ho, ho, ho!' And the cat's ears were laid far back as she eyed him. 'Just wait till I catch you, Master Joe,' pussy seemed to say.
Ah, well, there is one good thing about cats and dogs—they bear no malice, and very likely at dinner-time Joe would be forgiven, and all Crona's pets eating out of the same dish.
Her fairy godmother, as Lotty always called Crona, kept the child that day as long as she possibly could. But duty was duty, and Lotty had to leave at last. It was already getting dusk, and she must try to get through the forest before the gloom of night came down over sea and land.
The girl feared nothing when Wallace was with her; the faithful dog would have laid down his life defending his little mistress. Nor was she afraid of losing herself; for, thanks to the foresight of her friend Chops, the trees were still blazed. Indeed, the boy had but lately renewed the markings. And he was to meet her to-night somewhere in the wood where the footpath went winding through it. Footpaths never go straight, and perhaps that is the chief charm of them. But this narrow beaten track was probably more winding than most of them. It wound in and out and round about clumps of the thicker, darker spruce-firs and big moss-covered rocks, down into gloomy dells, where in the season the capercailzie gave vent to his ghostly crow and cushat doves croodled mournfully on the tall larch-trees. Down into one dell, over a more open hill, and down into another, where one had to cross a brown, roaring, 'jouking' burn by a tree-bridge.
And this green hollow with the streamlet running through it was supposed to be haunted. Real fairies, they told one, used to dwell here at one time, before the ferns withered away. But five fairies used to be seen at once floating downstream on a plantain-leaf, which they used as a raft—pleasant little parties of five male and apparently rather reckless fairies, for they danced and sang and quaffed honey-dew from acorn-cups. But they were polite, and when a lady-fairy went floating past in a foxglove bell they never failed to lift their hats and hide their cups for the time being, as well as their pine-needle cigars.
But the fairies did not come back after the ferns were withered, only ugly warty toads, and they are not fairies. And the reason why the ferns withered in the dell was that a ghost had come to walk at midnight here. It was the ghost of a gamekeeper, and his story was a gruesome one. He was killed here, but the man who slew him was never found out, and that is why the ghost walks there. Some of the gamekeeper's blood, it is said, trickled into the stream, and that is how it has been brown ever since.
Well, something happened on this very night. At one side of the tree-bridge was a rail, and it was pretty dark by the time Lotty had her hand on it. And she was pausing here for a moment to listen to the gurgling song of the brooklet, and also to hear if Chops was coming. Chops always whistled to keep his courage up when coming through this wood at night. But she could not hear him, nor did Wallace, else he would have barked a half-hysterical bark of joy. She was just about to move on, when, lo! she was startled by seeing a light like that of a candle moving straight upstream towards her. She certainly was a little trembling, but she could not have been called frightened.