Part 11 (1/2)

'I would like you to give him his liberty if he will promise to go away from our moor and never come back any more for five hundred years,' continued the child, who apparently had not noticed the interruption. 'If he does not keep his promise after he is set free, he will run the terrible risk of again being taken prisoner in the Magic Pail and having Daddy Trebisken's threat carried out upon him.'

'What threat?' asked Joan. 'Aw, I remember now--his being put into a hoggan for my Tom's dinner. He is too bad for my good Tom to make a meal of,' shaking her head at the hare in the Pail. 'He will have to be made into a pasty, as a warning to all evil-intending Long-Ears.'

The poor animal in the Pail could not have looked more wretched if he was to be made into a pasty there and then, and he cried in his terror, and the three little hares on the doorstep lifted up their small voices in sympathy.

The latter's wails were more than Joan's tender heart could stand.

'Poor little things!' she cried, looking first at the small Long-Ears and then at Ninnie-Dinnie. 'If he will promise to do what you want him, I'll set him free. 'Tis hard they should suffer for their wicked old daddy's wrongdoing.'

'It is,' responded the child in her gravest manner. 'And it is for their sakes more than his own that I am willing he should have his liberty. Ask him if he will consent to do all I told you.'

Joan, looking at the prisoner, repeated what Ninnie-Dinnie had said, and asked him whether he would have his freedom under those conditions.

The Long-Eared muttered something--what, she did not know, but the little maid seemed to understand, and she told her foster-mother that though the conditions were hard, he had promised to keep them if she would set him free from the Magic Pail.

'Then let us do it at once,' cried Joan, for the appealing eyes of those three little hares on the doorstep were more than she could endure.

The child came to her side, and offered her shoulder to enable the crippled woman to do her kind deed, and almost before Joan knew it she was at the door, with the Magic Pail gripped firmly in her hand, and found herself saying:

'I command thee, in the name of my little Ninnie-Dinnie an' the Magic Pail, never to come on our moors till the five hundred years are up. Remember, if you do, or try to hurt any of the dear Little People, they will compel thee to come into this here Pail, an' hand 'ee over to somebody who loves the Wee Folk as much as I do, an'

who will cut 'ee all to bits, an' put 'ee into a great las.h.i.+ng [35]

pasty for a miner's dinner.' [36]

The Skavarnak uttered a terrified howl, and Joan, looking down into the Pail, saw, not a hare, but a dreadful little hobgoblin, with ears as long as his ugly little body.

She dropped the Pail in her fright, and the ugly little creature sped away into the darkness, followed by the three wee hares, or hobgoblins, as no doubt they were.

Ninnie-Dinnie looked very happy when they had gone, and the Pail evidently shared her joy, for it was nearly white, and its embossed characters looked almost as beautiful as the little Pool's sunbeams.

The child would not go out on the moor for a long time after the Daddy Long-Ears was set free. She said she must stop at home and look after her Mammie Trebisken. But when October came, and the purple heath-bells had changed to tawny brown, and the bracken's green into orange and bronze, she began once more to give little wistful glances out over the great stretch of moorland.

One day--the very day of the same month she was brought to the cottage in the bramble-basket ten years before--Tom, noticing the longing glances, begged her to go with him a little way, and Ninnie-Dinnie, after asking the crippled woman if she could spare her, got ready to go.

'I thought you wouldn't want to take the Pail along with you now the Long-Eared can't hurt 'ee any more,' said Joan, as the child went to the dresser for the Pail.

'And yet I must take it,' she replied. 'What shall I bring you home?'

'Thyself, my beauty!' cried the woman. 'I'm safe, I reckon, in wanting to have only my Ninnie-Dinnie brought back to me. She is better than all the lark's music an' the Pool's s.h.i.+ne, isn't she?' appealing to Tom, who nodded his head. 'An' we don't want no Daddy Skavarnak here no more, do we?'

'I should think not,' cried the miner.

'Mammie Trebisken's request was a downright sensible one this time, wasn't it?' he remarked to the little maid as they walked away from the cottage.

Ninnie-Dinnie did not answer, which somehow troubled him, and he looked at her curiously.

When the miner and the child had reached the place where she had caught the hare, they stopped and looked about them.