n 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,