A suspicious grunt was the only answer; and Dick hastened to go on, "Oh, please, we mean no harm, but we've lost our way. It's only Elsie and me."
"Ah!" said the woman's voice, as if in surprise.
"Yes, it's only Dick and me," said Elsie in her most reassuring voice, but, like Dick, forgetting her grammar.
And then a curious, cackling laugh sounded out of the mist; the lantern came bounding forward, and before she could realise what had happened, Elsie found her skirt seized and a great rough head scrubbing against it. She gave a cry of terror, but directly afterwards the lantern showed her the face of the idiot, which grinned at her with delight for a moment and then bent again to kiss her skirt. Then another figure came out of the darkness, seized the lantern and held it first to her face and then to Dick's. They saw that it was the idiot's mother, and Dick again repeated, though with much secret fear, that they had lost their way.
"Is there no one with 'ee?" asked the woman astonished.
"No," said Dick sadly. "We're lost."
"Why, my dear tender hearts," said the woman in a voice of great pity, "to think of that. But don't 'ee cry, my dear," for she could hear Elsie sobbing gently, "don't 'ee cry, for 'tis all well now. See now, my house is close by, and you'm safe, both of 'ee. Come long with me, and don't be afeared; I'll take care of 'ee and take 'ee home safe enough. To think of that now—" and so she went on, leading the way for them with the lantern for another quarter of a mile up the water, till she stopped, and saying, "Now, my dears, we'm home," lifted Elsie from her saddle and carried her under a low doorway, and then coming back, called Dick in also, leaving the ponies in charge of the idiot.
CHAPTER IX
It was but a very little house in which the children found themselves; and it took some time for them to make it out, for there was no light but that of a feeble rushlight in a horn lantern, and the faint glow of a peat fire. But after a while they perceived that it was built of sods of turf and lined with heather, neatly fixed into the turf by wooden pegs such as gardeners use; while the ceiling was also of heather, laid crosswise against ashen poles. The fire-place seemed to be built of round stones, evidently taken from a stream, which were plastered together with clay; and the chimney was carried outside the wall. Across the chimney was fixed an iron bar, from which hung a rude chain that appeared to have been made of old horse-shoes, and at the end of the chain was an iron pot. The only furniture was a low table of turf, which was built in the middle of the floor, and a couple of three-legged stools; and besides the iron pot on the fire, a frying-pan, a jug or two, a couple of wooden bowls and as many platters, there was hardly a vessel or a plate to be seen. The house, though of but one room, had one portion of it shut off by a low screen made of ash-poles and heather; and a similar screen lying against the wall appeared to take the place of a front door, when a front door was needed.