“Look!” said Mark, pointing to a chimney just under them. The square top, blackened by soot, stood in the midst of apple-trees, on whose boughs the young green apples showed. The thatch of the cottage was concealed by the trees.
“A hut!” said Bevis.
“Savages!” said Mark, “I know, I’ll pitch a stone down the chimney, and you get your bow ready, and shoot them as they rush out.”
“Capital!” said Bevis. Mark picked up a flint, and “chucked” it—it fell very near the chimney, they heard it strike the thatch and roll down. Mark got another, and most likely, having found the range, would have dropped it into the chimney this time, when Bevis stopped him.
“It may be a witch,” he said. “Don’t you know what John told us? if you pitch a stone down a witch’s chimney it goes off bang! and the stone shoots up into the air like a cannon-ball.”
“I remember,” said Mark. “But John is a dreadful story. I don’t believe it.”
“No, no more do I. Still we ought to be careful. Let’s creep down and look first.”
They got down the hillside with difficulty, it was so steep and slippery—the grass being dried by the sun. At the bottom there was a streamlet running along deep in a gully, a little pool of the clearest water to dip from, and a green sparred wicket-gate in a hawthorn hedge about the garden. Peering cautiously through the gate they saw an old woman sitting under the porch beside the open door, with a black teapot on the window-ledge close by, and a blue teacup, in which she was soaking a piece of bread, in one hand.
“It’s a witch,” whispered Mark. “There’s a black cat by the wall-flowers—that’s a certain sign.”
“And two sticks with crutch-handles,” said Bevis. “But just look there.” He pointed to some gooseberry bushes loaded with the swelling fruit, than which there is nothing so pleasant on a warm, thirsty day. They looked at the gooseberries, and thirsted for them; then they looked at the witch.