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"When you told us yourself that they were quite safe!" protested Matthew Henry. "And you said you would lead us over and back without any danger at all." "The fact is," said Vashti, quietly, "Annet feels herself responsible for you, and thinks that very likely I am a witch." The child faced her bravely, biting her lip upon the inward struggle. "You are not a witch," she said.
He never done no wrong not what you might call wrong: or so he maintained, an' 'twasn't for me to disbelieve 'en. Was it, now?" "You'll tell us about it, Jan dear?" coaxed Annet. "There's no particular story in it." "What is a stream-work?" asked Matthew Henry. "A stream-work is a moor beside a river, where the mud is full of ore, washed down from the country above sometimes from the old mines.
It all depends on the heart that tries it; but there is nothing can do him harm if he keeps up his courage; and the end of the road is worth all the journey, for a man." "Why, Aunt Vazzy, you talk as if you had been there!" cried Annet. "And so I have, my dear; there and back again." The three children stared at her. "Aunt Vazzy is joking," said Linnet, severely.
"It is easy," she called back to the children; "easy enough, if you don't let the water frighten you. Why, Annet could jump it if she dared. Annet ... but no, child! go back!" But Annet, with a quick glance at her, and another at the water swirling below, had set her teeth and stepped back half-a-dozen paces. She would follow this woman, witch or no witch. Linnet cried, too, and Matthew Henry.
"Everybody knows that the fairies always pass to and fro through Piper's Hole," said Annet, in a positive voice. "The mermaids, too. The cave there goes right through Inniscaw and under the sea, and comes up again in the mainland.
Why, Annet?" "I don't know," Annet answered, almost stupidly. The danger past, she felt faint of a sudden and dazed; nor could she understand what the strange lady meant by embracing her again, almost with a sob, and murmuring: "The little water, and so hard to cross! But we had the courage, Annet you and I!"
To the children it seemed that their parents seldom or never talked, and never by any chance took a rest. Their names were Annet, Linnet and Matthew Henry, and this was the order of their ages Annet nine, Linnet seven, and Matthew Henry rising five.
"Mother was always singing it when she rocked Matthew Henry to sleep, and sometimes we get her to sing as much as she can remember for a treat." "But she can only remember five or six verses," said Linnet; "and her voice is not beautiful like yours." Annet and Matthew Henry protested. Their mother's was a beautiful voice; one of the most beautiful in the world.
After discussing this, they decided to take Jan into the plot. "Maybe," said Annet, "he'll come along, too. I almost think he will if we put it to him all of a sudden, for he's mighty curious about mermaids; but if we give him time to think it over he'll feel ashamed, and say it's all children's whiddles, and back out I know Jan. So we must wait till school is over and then coax him to come."
They had planned to take their dinner wrapped in their handkerchiefs and climb to the old tombs on the hill overlooking Brefar, then to play at being Aztecs, from hints which Annet had dug out of an old History of Mexico on her mother's bookshelf, and at hiding treasure from the Spaniards, whose ships were to come sailing through the Off Islands.
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