"Bless me for a landlubber if I thought of it at all!" replied Felgate. "Say, mistress, where shall we set you down?"
"At the top of the Devil's Punch Bowl, if it pleases you, sir," replied the old woman in a quavering voice, "for then I shall be safe."
"'Tis a big request, Felgate," I remarked, knowing that the summit of Hindhead, close to which the Bowl is situated, was a good six miles off, and an uphill road the whole way.
"Never mind; a good deed but half done is a sorry performance." And with this we set spurs to our horses and trotted briskly up the long slope that led to the towering heights that showed clearly before us.
Although I had oft journeyed across this bleak hill, never before had I seen it under such depressing circumstances. The sun had long vanished behind a bank of dark-grey, undefined clouds, while a cold wind howled across our path, moaning through the treetops and raising clouds of choking dust on the sun-dried highway.
Just as we reached the summit, where the road makes a vast horseshoe curve round the dark, forbidding cavity known as the Devil's Punch Bowl, a heavy rainstorm came on, blotting out the horizon, while a vivid flash of lightning, followed at a short interval by a tremendous clap of thunder, startled our horses, and, be it confessed, ourselves as well.
"Thunder in April! And in company with a witch! This smacks of His Satanic Majesty with a vengeance!" muttered Drake, drawing closer to me.
"Set me down here, sir," whined the hag, and Felgate having done so, she turned towards us.
"I have not far to go now--my home is down there," indicating with a skinny finger the rain-blotted heathery pit beneath us.
"And now," she continued, "take an old dame's blessing for your kindness in helping the helpless, and may success reward your search."