‘It looks to me as th' child's getten up theer somehaa;’ and so saying, Moses pointed to the ledge of rock where Jenny Greenteeth was said to slumber through the winter's cold.
‘What mut th' child ged up theer for?’ asked Amos. ‘Thaa talks like a chap as never hed no childer.’
At this rebuff Moses was silent; for not only was he a childless man, but until the day he saved the very child they were now seeking from the Green Fold Lodge, children had been nothing to him. Now, however, he had learned to love them, and none better than the little lost offspring of Oliver o' Deaf Martha's.
While the two men were wrangling, Mr. Penrose stepped aside and commenced the climb towards the ledge. The snow lay white and undisturbed on the shelving surface, and there was no sign of recent movements. Looking round, he discovered the mouth of the recess. There it stood, black and forbidding. In another moment the minister stooped down and looked in; but all was dark and silent, nor did he care to go further along what to him was an unknown way.
‘Have any of you a light?’ asked he of the men below; and Malachi handed him his collier's candle and matches, with which he commenced to penetrate the gloom.
It was a small cavernous opening out of which, in years past, men had quarried stone. Damp dripped from the roof, and ran down its seamed and discoloured sides. Autumn leaves, swept there by the wind, strewed its uneven floor, and lay in heaps against the jutting angles. A thin line of snow had drifted in through the mouth, and ran like a river of light along the gloomy entrance, to lose itself in the recesses beyond.
The feeble flicker of the candle which Mr. Penrose held in his hand flung hideous shadows, and lighted up the cave dimly enough to make it more eerie and grotesque. The minister had not searched long before he was startled by a cry—a faint and childish cry:
‘Arto Jenny Greenteeth?’
‘No, my boy; I'm Mr. Penrose.’
‘It's noan th' parson aw want; aw want th' fairy.’