The Drummers Coat | Page 9

the trees where the Corporal was lunging a steady old Exmoor pony round and round, while Dick, with a pair of long gaiters added to his attire, sat firmly on its back, though without saddle or stirrups. "Tell me; has anything happened to the boy to frighten him?"
"Well, my Lady," answered Mrs. Fry, "I consider myself that the boy's overlooked."
"Overlooked?" said Lady Eleanor.
"Yes, my Lady. For they do tell me that the woman that comed through the village yesterday with the mazed body told my Tommy, 'You don't spake again,' she says, 'till I tell 'ee.'"
"Oh! nonsense," said Lady Eleanor, "don't think of such stuff."
"But she did," persisted Mrs. Fry, "and sure enough the boy can't spake. She's overlooked mun! she's awitched mun, you may depend, my Lady. And I'm sure if you'd a known who they two was, you wouldn't never have let mun go. She's the old witch to Cossacombe, that's what she is, though she a'nt never been this way afore, and the man's as bad as she is, I'll be bound, though I never heard tell of he afore."
"Why, it was easy to see that he was but a poor half-witted creature," said Lady Eleanor, "as harmless as a child; his mother told me that she hardly let him out of her sight."
"Well, my Lady, 'tis all very well to say that the man's mazed," answered Mrs. Fry almost forgetting her manners in her excitement, "but what took mun down among the boys? Why, to take the ale from them! And what is ales but sarpints, my Lady?" said Mrs. Fry throwing out her hands, "and what makes the man so friendly with sarpints, that he must come to save mun? We know, do you and I, my Lady, who is the old sarpint and the father of sarpints. And then what was he doing with that strange baste on his shoulder, my Lady?"
"Why, it was only a tame squirrel," said Lady Eleanor.
"Squirrel, my lady," said Mrs. Fry mysteriously. "Aye, 'twas a squirrel; but who knows but what it mayn't be a dragin when it gets 'oom?"
"A squirrel turn into a dragon?" said Lady Eleanor. "I never heard such childish stuff in my life; and I wouldn't have believed that a sensible woman like you could have thought of such a thing."
"Well, I won't say as it was a dragin, my Lady," said Mrs. Fry, a little abashed, "but they do say that the witch has to do with dragins. She comes from out over the moor some place, she doth; and though she's a seen on times about Cossacombe, no man can tell where she liveth nor dare go sarch for mun. Jimmy Beer went out to look for mun two year agone in the dimmet after Cossacombe revel, but the fog came down so thick as a bag; and while he was a-wandering, a dragin (for so he saith it was, though I never seed a dragin myself) passed so close to mun as I be to you, my Lady, and when he looked to the ground he saw the mark of his cloven hoof so plain as could be. And he was pixy-led all that night, my Lady, was the old Jimmy, and when he come home all his money was gone; so I reckon that the pixies is in league with the witches."
"I suspect that Jimmy had drunk too much cider," said Lady Eleanor severely; "he should have kept sober or stuck to the road, and then he would not have brought back foolish stories about pixies and witches. I wonder that you can believe in such things."
"I know mun too well, my Lady," said Mrs. Fry mournfully. "There was my pig back in the spring, so rasonable a pig as ever ate mate, until the white witch to Gratton overlooked mun. And I never did the white witch no harm, nor the pig didn't neither; but as they was driving the pig along the road--and you know what pigs is, driving, my Lady,--the white witch comes riding on his one-eyed donkey; and the pig runned against the donkey, and the old man[1] muttered something or 'nother--"
"But the old man is dead, I was told," said Lady Eleanor.
"'Eas fai! and so he is, my Lady, and a terrible job they had to bury mun--thunder, lightning and hailstones so big as sloes. Dead he is, and I won't jidge mun--but not afore he'd a doed the mischief, for but three weeks afterward my pig falls into the mill-leat. So there's my pig a drownded, and my Tommy so dumb as a haddock--can't go to school, can't do nought but ate his mate and sit in the corner for all the world like a moulting hen. Ah, they witches! I wish they was a-burned,