"Our search?" exclaimed Greville, astonished at her words.
"Ay, your search," mumbled the old crone.
"And shall we succeed?" I asked.
"Not till the waters run dry!" she replied mysteriously, and with that another flash of lightning left us blinking in semi-darkness. When we looked round the witch had gone. A moment later we saw her making her way with great agility down the steep slope of the Bowl, till she disappeared from our view behind a large clump of heather and gorse.
"Well, I'm----," and here Felgate broke off for want of a word to express his surprise.
"How did she know we were on a treasure hunt?"
"That's more than I can tell," replied Drake, and drawing our cloaks tighter around our shivering bodies, we rode down the hill, silent and depressed, through the driving rain, towards the town of Godalming.
[CHAPTER XX--What we Heard and Saw at Holwick.]
The rest of our journey northward passed almost without incident. The day after our arrival at Godalming we rode quickly through Guildford to London, where we tarried no longer than we could possibly help, staying that night in the village of Highgate.
Four days later, following the seemingly endless Great North Road, we arrived at the village of Bawtry, from which it is said most of our New England colonists had come. This place is just over the Yorkshire border, and to our unaccustomed ears the broad dialect seemed almost a foreign tongue.