"Fine, and how be yew?" came the answer.
"Ah," muttered Peter. "That be the way my old Gran'vaither ought to tell."
After that they soon stumbled upon the truth. It had been whispered about the place that Peter was dabbling in witchcraft for Pendoggat's detriment; and Annie Crocker had heard the whisper. To inform her master was an act of ordinary enjoyment. He had sworn at her, professed contempt for Peter and all his dolls, stated his intention of destroying them, or at least of obtaining the legal benefit conferred by certain ancient Acts of Parliament dealing with witches; but in his heart he was horribly afraid. He spent hours watching the huts, and when he saw the inhabitants move away he would go near, hoping to steal the clay doll and destroy it; but Peter's door was always locked. At last he hit upon the plan of frightening the superstitious little man by addressing him through the medium of the clock. He thought he had succeeded. Perhaps he would have done so had Mary's keen eyes not detected the scrap of gorse which his departure had snapped from one of the hurdles which made the door of the linhay. Pendoggat might be a strong man physically, able to bully the weak, or bring a horse to its knees, but his mind was made of rotten stuff, and it is the strong mind rather than the stalwart body which saves a man when "Ephraim's Pinch" comes. Pendoggat's knees became wobbly whenever he thought of Peter and his clay doll.
When the blue mist had cleared off, snow began to fall in a business-like way, and before the last light had been extinguished in the twin villages the moor was buried. Peter thought he would watch beside the well during the early part of the night, to see the little people dragging up his crock of gold, for he had not altogether abandoned the idea that it had been witchcraft and not Pendoggat which had conferred upon Grandfather the gift of a tongue, but the snow made his plan impossible. He and Mary sat together and talked in a subdued fashion. Peter knitted a pair of stockings for his sister, while Mary mended her brother's boots and hammered snow-nails into the soles. A new mommet had been made, broken up, and its fragments were placed beside the well, while the original doll baked resignedly upon Mary's hearthstone. Pendoggat or pixies the savages were a match for either. It remained calm upon the moor, but the snow continued most of the night with a slight southerly drift, falling in the dense masses which people who live upon mountains have to put up with.
In the morning all was white and dazzling; the big tors had nearly doubled in size, and the sides of Tavy Cleave were bulging as though pregnant with little Tavy Cleaves. It was a glorious day, one of those days when the ordinary healthy person wants to stand on his head or skip about like a young unicorn. The sun was out, the sky was as blue as a baby's eyes, and the clouds were like puffs of cigarette smoke. Peter embraced himself, recorded in his work of creation that it was all very good, then floundered outside and made for the well. He shovelled a foot of snow from the cover, wound up the bucket, caught a glimpse of yellow water, and then of something golden, more precious than water, air, or sunshine, brave yellow pieces of gold, five in number, worth one-hundred-and-twenty pints of beer apiece. They were lying at the bottom of the bucket like a beautiful dream. Peter had come into a fortune; his teeth informed him that the coins were genuine, his tongue sent the glad tidings to Mary, his mind indulged in potent flights of travel and dissipation. He had inherited twelve hundred pints of beer.
"Aw, Peter," Mary was calling. "There ha' been witches abroad to-night."
"They'm welcome," cried Peter.
"Look ye here," Mary went on in a frightened voice. "Look ye here, will ye? Here be a whist sight, I reckon."
Mary was standing near the edge of the cleave, knee-deep in snow, looking down. When Peter floundered up to her side she said nothing, but pointed at the snow in front. Peter's hilarious countenance was changed, and the five sovereigns in his hand became like so many pieces of ice. The snow ahead was marked with footprints, not those of an animal, not those of a man. The marks were those of a biped, cloven like a cow's hoof but much larger, and they travelled in a perfectly straight line across the moor, and behind them the snow was ruffled occasionally as by a tail. Peter began to blubber like a frightened child.
"'Tis him," he muttered.