"Worse than heathen, maybe," said old Job Dean, who has had no good will to this journey from the first. "Every one knows what moormen are. They are no more proper human beings than mermen are—brutes that make no scruple to feed on human flesh, when by their wiles and magic arts they cause any poor travellers to lose their way on these God-forsaken wastes."
"Methinks no magic arts would be needed to make one lose one's way on these moors, in darkness or a fog," said my father.
"You are right," answered Cousin Joslyn. "Many lives are lost on them every year, not however, as I think, by any arts or cannibal tastes of these poor savages, but from the want of any roads or hostelries, the sudden fogs, and the treacherous nature of the soil, abounding in bogs, quicksands, and old mining excavations made by the heathen long ago. As for these poor creatures, I have ever found them, though timid, distrustful and full of wild and heathen superstitions, yet kindly disposed enow."
"You have been among them, then?" asked my mother.
"Yes, Madam, in my wanderings after herbs and simples, birds' nests and strange stones," answered Cousin Joslyn, smiling somewhat sadly. "The people about Tremador will tell you that I am either mad as a March hare, or else that I am a conjuror, as dangerous as the moormen themselves."
We ate our midday meal by the side of one of the streams I spoke of, and seeing some of the wild people—a woman and two children, peeping out at us from behind the bushes—my mother laid some of our abundant provision on a rock, and by signs made them welcome; and after our departure we looked back from the other side of the stream, and saw them devouring the food with ravenous haste.
"Poor things! I am glad they will have had one pleasure to-day," said my mother, nodding to the woman, who nodded in return, and made an odd gesture, stooping to the stream, and throwing the water toward us with her hands.
"That is to bring us good luck on our journey," observed Cousin Joslyn.
"More like to put a spell on us and our horses, that we may fall into their power!" growled old Job. "I would like to send some arrows among them!" So cruel is even fear, in all its shapes.
The sun had set, and it was growing dark when we entered upon the lands of Sir John Carey, and saw his house before us on the hillside—a tumbledown old pile, half manor house, half castle, once evidently a stronghold, but fast falling to decay.