You may be sure that they spared no haste in getting away. By the time the sun was high they had reached a village, where they procured horses. All the money that Laurine had made by her dancing was kept by the Goblin tied up in a bag with his fiddle; so they lacked no means of getting forward, and they turned their heads towards the country from which they had started.
When they reached the wood they could have shouted for joy. As they came to the middle of it the Goblin stamped his heel, and all the candles of the horse-chestnut trees burst into a blaze of light, for they had been away a whole year, and it was the season of blossom again. Swayn and Laurine promised to live with their uncle Sackbut, and never to leave him any more.
They were soon married, with great pomp and solemnity, the only drawback being that the Goblin could not make up his mind whether to be best man, or give away the bride, or play the wedding music on his fiddle. But the matter was happily settled by his doing all three.
THE WITCH’S CLOAK
Peter and Janet and the miller stood on the rising ground by the farm; the sound of the wheel came to them, and the whir of grinding. Before them lay the tidal marshes that stretched to the seaport town. It was the same town through whose streets the Water-Nix followed the pedlar when she left dry land for the last time to swim out and join the water-kelpies. It looked like a blue shadow-town now, cut sharp against sky and sea, with its tall steeple reflected in the wet sand.
“I have often had it in my mind to tell you a strange story my grandmother heard about a man who lived in that place,” said the miller, pointing across the salt marsh.
“Is it true?” asked Peter.
“That’s more than I know,” replied his friend, “for I never asked my granny, and maybe if I had, she couldn’t have told me. If you like the story you can think it true, and if you don’t we’ll say it isn’t.”
“Have you ever been in that town?” the miller asked Janet.
“Never,” said she.