CHAPTER TEN.
IN A WASP'S NEST.
Days had passed, and strange reports were flying about the sparsely inhabited neighbourhood.

Fresh people had seen the witches in their long gowns, and it was rumoured that if any one dared to make the venture, they might be found crouching over their fire any dark, stormy night on the slope of Ergles, where nobody ever went, for it was a desolate waste, where a goat might have starved.
The tales grew like snowballs, as they passed from mouth to mouth, but for the most part they were very unsubstantial in all points save one, and that possessed substance; not only lambs, but sheep, had disappeared, and in the case of a miner and his wife, who lived some distance off, and who had been away for a week to a wedding beyond the mountains, they returned to their solitary cottage to find that it had been entered in their absence, and completely stripped of everything movable, even to the bed, while the very cabbages in the garden had been torn up and carried away.
Mark had the news from the man himself, and he carried it to his father and sister, as he had carried Dummy Rugg's rumour about the witches and their fire, which went out so suddenly on being seen.
"Humph!" said Sir Edward, smiling; "that looks as if the witches liked vegetables with their lamb and mutton.

Stripped the cottage, and took the meal-tub too ?" "Everything, father," said Mark.
"Then it's time the men made a search, my boy," said Sir Edward; "we must have a robber about.

There is the whole explanation of the old women's tales.

Well, they will have to bestir themselves, and catch the thief." It was on that same morning that the news reached Cliff Castle, where similar stories had floated about witches and warlocks having taken possession of the shivering hills, where the slatey rocks were always falling, and forming what the country people called screes, which, at a distance, when wet and shiny, looked in the sunshine like cascades descending from on high.
"If it comes to any of our sheep being taken, we shall have to take to a hunt, Ralph," Sir Morton had said.