The Black Tor Part 20

Ralph's brow wrinkled, and he looked down at his bare legs and feet, raising one a little, painfully, to draw attention to the terribly swollen state of his ankles and knees.

"Shamming!" he said quietly. "Am I? Well, they are not."

Ralph held out first one leg, and then the other, before seating himself again, drawing his hose from his belt, and trying to draw them on; but at the end of a minute the pain from his swollen wrists forced him to give up the task, and he slowly replaced the hose in his belt.

Twice over, unseen by Ralph, his companion made a gesture as if to advance and help him, but he mastered the inclination; and after a while, Ralph sat perfectly still, waiting for the giddy feeling from which he suffered to go off. And at last, feeling a little better, he rose to his feet, bowed distantly, and began to descend the steep slope; but in a few minutes he was clinging to a tree, helpless once more, and he started, as Mark suddenly said, roughly:

"Here; you don't know our cliff: let me show you--"

Ralph was under the impression that he had left Mark Eden quite behind, and his surprise was the greater when he found that his enemy was offering him his arm, and ended by helping him down the remainder of the way to the river, where the injured lad gladly seated himself at the edge upon a stone, which enabled him to lave both feet at once in the clear cool current, to the great comfort and relief of his swollen ankles.

After a time he was able to use his feet, resume his hose and shoes, and rise to start back; but it was awkward to part without some word of thanks, and these were very difficult to say to one who stood by all the time, watching every action, with a mocking smile upon his lips.

But the words had to be said, and making an effort Ralph turned to speak. But before a sound had left his lips, Mark burst out with:

"Going now? Very well. Wait till we meet again. That way, sir. I dare say you know that you can cross the river there?"

Ralph bowed coldly, and took a few steps toward the shallows, before stopping short.

"I must go and thank him for what he has done," he said to himself; and he turned to walk back, but Mark was not visible.

"Master Mark Eden," he cried; but there was no reply, and he cried again, shouting as loud as he could, but there was still no response.

And, sick at heart with pain and vexation, Ralph once more stumbled awkwardly along by the river, amongst stone, bramble, and fern, trying to make out where the deep chasm was down into which he had looked, but it was completely hidden by the trees; and, reaching the shallows, he slowly crossed to go homeward on the more open side, which was a far less difficult task, though it necessitated crossing the river again.

But as the lad disappeared among the trees, Mark Eden rose from where he had been hidden behind a pile of fallen blocks, to make his way into the chasm, and then upward to the castle on the Black Tor, frowning very fiercely, and feeling a good deal dissatisfied with himself, though brightening up a little as he began thinking of what was to happen the next time he and Ralph Darley met.

"One couldn't do anything," he said roughly, "till that old business had been put straight."

CHAPTER TWELVE.

BARING THE WHITE BLADE.

Ralph Darley's disposition led him to determine to say nothing about what had pa.s.sed, but his lame legs forced him to confess how it was his ankles were so bad, and Sir Morton was furious. He was ready to declare war on a small scale against his neighbour, and carry fire and sword into his camp. But Ralph's legs were better the next day; and when the whole history of the two encounters had been gone over, he thought better of the affair, to the extent of determining to wait till his son was quite well again; and when he was quite well, there were other things to dwell upon.

For one, Nick Garth, who had been across to one of the villages beyond the moor, came back with his head bleeding, and stripped to breeches and shirt.

His account of his trouble was that he was coming home in the dark, keeping one eye upon a flickering light some distance away up the mountain-side. Sometimes it was visible, at others all was black; and he was wondering whether it had anything to do with the witches' fire of which he had heard tell, when all at once he found himself surrounded by seven or eight wild-looking figures, either in long gowns or cloaks, who seized him; and upon his resisting wildly, they knocked him down, took the best of his clothes away, emptied his pockets, and departed, carrying off a large basket he was taking home, a basket containing two chickens, two ducklings, and a big pat of b.u.t.ter, the present of a married sister beyond the moors.

The next day news reached the Black Tor that the witches had been seen again by two different miners, and in each case the tale was the same.

The witches were crowding together in a huddled way, in their long cloaks, over a fire. A caldron was hung from three sticks, joined together at the top, and one of the men declared that they must have been busy over some unhallowed work.

"Why do you say that, man?" asked Mark.

"Because they were chanting some horrible thing together."

"You heard that?"

"Ay, Master Mark, I heered it."

"A song?"

"Song, Master Mark? Save us, no! A song makes your eyes water if it's about solemn things, or it makes you laugh if it's comic; but this made the marrow in my bones turn hard as taller, for it went through me; and as I watched them, they all got up and joined hands, and began to walk slowly round the great pot over the fire, and the light shone on their horrible faces and long ragged gowns. I wanted to run away, but my legs was all of a tremble. I'd ha' give anything to run, but they legs wouldn't go, and there I stood, watching 'em as they danced round the fire a little faster, and a little faster, till they were racing about, singing and screeching. And then all at once they stopped and shouted `Wow?' all together, and burst into the most horrid shrecking laughter you ever heered, and the light went out. That seemed to set my legs going, master, and I turned to get away as fast as ever I could go, when I heered some kind o' wild bird whistle over the mountain-side, and another answered it close to me: and before I knew where I was, the great bird fluttered its wings over me, and I caught my foot in a tuft of heather, and fell."

"Well, and what then?" asked Mark.

"Nothing, sir, only that I ran all the way home to my cottage yonder, and you ask my wife, and she'll tell you I hadn't a dry thread on me when I got in. Now, sir, what do you say?"

"All nonsense!" replied Mark bluntly, and he walked away.

Another few days pa.s.sed. Mark had been very quiet and thoughtful at home, reading, or making believe to read, and spending a good deal of time in the mine with Dummy Rugg, who twice over proposed that they should go on exploring the grotto-like place he had discovered; but to his surprise, his young master put it off, and the quiet, silent fellow waited. He, though, had more tales to tell of the way in which things disappeared from cottages. Pigs, sheep, poultry went in the most unaccountable way, and the witches who met sometimes on the mountain slope had the credit of spiriting them away.

"Then why don't the people who lose things follow the witches up, and see if they have taken them?"

"Follow 'em up, sir?" said Dummy, opening his eyes very widely. "They wouldn't dare."

Then came a day when, feeling dull and bitter and as if he were not enjoying himself at home, as he did the last time he was there, Mark mounted one of the stout cob ponies kept for his and his sister's use, and went for a good long round, one which was prolonged so that it was getting toward evening, and the sun was peering over the shoulder of one of the western hills, when, throwing the rein on his cob's neck, and leaving it to pick its own way among the stones of the moorland, he entered a narrow, waste-looking dale, about four miles from the Tor.

He felt more dull and low-spirited than when he started in the morning, probably from want of a good meal, for he had had nothing since breakfast, save a hunch of very cake-like bread and a bowl of milk at a cottage farm right up in the Peak, where he had rested his pony while it had a good feed of oats.

The dale looked desolation itself, in spite of the gilding of the setting sun. Stone lay everywhere: not the limestone of his own hills and cliffs, but grim, black-looking millstone-grit, which here and there formed craggy, forbidding outlines; and this did not increase his satisfaction with his ride, when he took up the rein and began to urge the cob on, to get through the gloomy place.

But the cob knew better than his master what was best, and refused to risk breaking its legs among the stones with which the moor was strewn.

"Ugh! you lazy fat brute," cried Mark; "one might just as well walk, and--Who's that?"

He shaded his eyes from the sun, and looked long and carefully at a figure a few hundred yards ahead till his heart began to beat fast, for he felt sure that it was Ralph Darley. Ten minutes after, he began to be convinced, and coming to a clearer place where there was a pretence of a bit of green sward, the cob broke into a canter of its own will, which brought its rider a good deal nearer to the figure trudging in the same direction. Then the cob dropped into a walk again, picking its way among great blocks of stone; and Mark was certain now that it was Ralph Darley, with creel on back, and rod over his shoulder, evidently returning from one of the higher streams after a day's fishing.

Mark's heart beat a little faster, and he nipped his cob's sides; but the patient animal would not alter its steady walk, which was at about the same rate as the fisher's, and consequently Mark had to sit and watch his enemy's back, as, unconscious of his presence, Ralph trudged on homeward, with one arm across his back to ease up the creel, which was fairly heavy with the delicate burden of grayling it contained, the result of a very successful day.

"He has his sword on this time," said Mark to himself, "and I've got mine."

The lad touched the hilt, to make sure it had not been jerked out of the scabbard during his ride.

"Just a bit farther on yonder," he muttered, gazing at the steep slope of a limestone hill to his right, and a mile distant, "there are some nice level bits of turf. I can overtake him then, and we can have a bit of a talk together."

The cob walked steadily on, avoiding awkward places better than his master could have guided him, and suddenly stopped short at a rocky pool, where a little spring of water gushed from the foot of a steep slope, and lowered its head to drink.

"You don't want water now," said Mark angrily; and he tightened the rein, but his cob had a mouth like leather; and caring nothing for the bit, bore upon it heavily, stretched out his neck, and had a long deep drink.

"I wish I had spurs on," muttered Mark; "I'd give you a couple of such digs, my fine fellow."

Then he sat thinking.

"Good job I haven't got any on. I should trip, for certain, when we were at it."