“Well, I can’t be that—and, be damned to you, you’re a wet sort of lad to father. Where d’ye hail from, laddie?”
“From Garsykes.”
Hardcastle glanced across the narrow valley, and back again to the boy. Tired as he was, exasperated by the simple answer, the humour of it all appealed to him. Apart from peril of other marshes he might blunder into, how could he let this waif go lonely with his fright across the mile that would seem endless leagues to him—the mile that stretched between this and Garsykes?
There was nothing for it but to go—a fool, knowing the way of the Lost Folk and their mercies—into the midst of what they had in store for him. Rebel as he would against suicide of this sort, he could not thrust aside a lad who shivered as he clung to him.
So they two went across the moonlit wilderness, picking their way between the bogs and the broken grounds. It was not easy going. The light was enough to show them a safe way till clouds came over the moon’s face now and then, and they were alone with darkness and the unfenced mines that lurked for heedless feet.
Hardcastle’s temper grew rusty as a file. He was taking all these pains for one of Garsykes brats, and the brat was wet and clinging. He wearied of the lad’s piteous crying for his mother, and cursed himself for inhumanity.
They plodded on, till they came half down the slope on his side of the stream. And now a great hubbub sounded from Garsykes, up above them, and lanterns were bobbing to and fro. A woman’s voice rose shrill into the stillness of the night.
“You’ve got to find my lad, or I’ll know why!”
“Turning us out o’ doors on a wild-goose chase,” came the answer.
Hardcastle knew the voice for Long Murgatroyd’s, and his surly protest was taken up by one and another.