“Hurry on in,” said Gowther. “Bess’ll be waiting supper for us. I’m just going to give Prince his oats.”
Bess Mossock, before her marriage, had been nurse to the children’s mother; and although it was all of twelve years since their last meeting they still wrote to each other from time to time and sent gifts at Christmas. So it was to Bess that their mother had turned when she had been called to join her husband abroad for six months, and Bess, ever the nurse, had been happy to offer what help she could. “And it’ll do this owd farmhouse a world of good to have a couple of childer brighten it up for a few months.”
She greeted the children warmly, and after asking how their parents were, she took them upstairs and showed them their rooms.
When Gowther came in they all sat round the table in the broad, low-ceilinged kitchen were Bess served up a monstrous Cheshire pie. The heavy meal, on top of the strain of travelling, could have only one effect, and before long Colin and Susan were falling asleep on their chairs. So they said good night and went upstairs to bed, each carrying a candle, for there was no electricity at Highmost Redmanhey.
“Gosh, I’m tired!”
“Oh, me too!”
“This looks all right, doesn’t it?”
“Mm.”
“Glad we came now, aren’t you?”
“Ye-es …”
“If you like,” said Gowther at breakfast, “we’ve time for a stroll round before Sam comes, then we’ll have to get in that last load of hay while the weather holds, for we could have thunder today as easy as not.”
Sam Harlbutt, a lean young man of twenty-four, was Gowther’s labourer, and a craftsman with a pitchfork. That morning he lifted three times as much as Colin and Susan combined, and with a quarter of the effort. By eleven o’clock the stack was complete, and they lay in its shade and drank rough cider out of an earthenware jar.
Later, at the end of the midday meal, Gowther asked the children if they had any plans for the afternoon.
“Well,” said Colin, “if it’s all right with you, we thought we’d like to go in the wood and see what there is there.”
“Good idea! Sam and I are going to mend the pig-cote wall, and it inner a big job. You go and enjoy yourselves. But when you’re up th’Edge sees you dunner venture down ony caves you might find, and keep an eye open for holes in the ground. Yon place is riddled with tunnels and shafts from the owd copper mines. If you went down theer and got lost that’d be the end of you, for even if you missed falling down a hole you’d wander about in the dark until you upped and died.”
“Thanks for telling us,” said Colin. “We’ll be careful.”
“Tea’s at five o’clock,” said Bess.
“And think on you keep away from them mine-holes!” Gowther called after them as they went out of the gate.
It was strange to find an inn there on that road. Its white walls and stone roof had nestled into the woods for centuries, isolated, with no other house in sight: a village inn, without a village. Colin and Susan came to it after a mile and a half of dust and wet tar in the heat of the day. It was named The Wizard, and above the door was fixed a painted sign which held the children’s attention. The painting showed a man, dressed like a monk, with long white hair and beard: behind him a figure in old-fashioned peasant garb struggled with the reins of a white horse which was rearing on its hind legs. In the background were trees.
“I wonder what all that means,” said Susan. “Remember to ask Gowther – he’s bound to know.”
They left the shimmering road for the green wood, and The Wizard was soon lost behind them as they walked among fir and pine, oak, ash, and silver birch, along tracks through bracken, and across sleek hummocks of grass. There was no end to the peace and beauty. And then, abruptly, they came upon a stretch of rock and sand from which the heat vibrated as if from an oven. To the north, the Cheshire plain spread before them like a green and yellow patchwork quilt dotted with toy farms and houses. Here the Edge dropped steeply for several hundred feet, while away to their right the country rose in folds and wrinkles until it joined the bulk of the Pennines, which loomed eight miles away through the haze.
The children stood for some minutes, held by the splendour of the view. Then Susan, noticing something closer to hand, said, “Look here! This must be one of the mines.”
Almost at their feet a narrow trench sloped into the rock.
“Come on,” said Colin, “there’s no harm in going down a little way – just as far as the daylight reaches.”
Gingerly they walked down the trench, and were rather disappointed to find that it ended in a small cave, shaped roughly like a discus, and full of cold, damp air. There were no tunnels or shafts: the only thing of note was a round hole in the roof, about a yard across, which was blocked by an oblong stone.
“Huh!” said Colin. “There’s nothing dangerous about this, anyway.”
All through the afternoon Colin and Susan roamed up and down the wooded hillside and along the valleys of the Edge, sometimes going where only the tall beech stood, and in such places all was still. On the ground lay dead leaves, nothing more: no grass or bracken grew; winter seemed to linger there among the grey, green beeches. When the children came out of such a wood it was like coming into a garden from a musty cellar.
In their wanderings they saw many caves and openings in the hill, but they never explored further than the limits of daylight.
Just as they were about to turn for home after a climb from the foot of the Edge, the children came upon a stone trough into which water was dripping from an overhanging cliff, and harmigh in the rock was carved the face of a bearded man, and underneath was engraved:
DRINK OF THIS
AND TAKE THY FILL FOR THE WATER FALLS BY THE WIZHARDS WILL
“The wizard again!” said Susan. “We really must find out from Gowther what all this is about. Let’s go straight home now and ask him. It’s probably nearly tea-time, anyway.”
They were within a hundred yards of the farm when a car overtook them and pulled up sharply. The driver, a woman, got out and stood waiting for the children. She looked about forty-five years old, was powerfully built (“fat” was the word Susan used to describe her), and her head rested firmly on her shoulders without appearing to have much of a neck at all. Two lines ran from either side of her nose to the corners of her wide, thin-lipped mouth, and her eyes were rather too small for her broad head. Strangely enough, her legs were thin and spindly, so that in outline she resembled a well-fed sparrow, but again that was Susan’s description.
All this Colin and Susan took in as they approached the car, while the driver eyed them up and down more obviously.
“Is this the road to Macclesfield?” she said when the children came up to her.
“I’m afraid I don’t know,” said Colin. “We’ve only just come to stay here.”
“Oh? Then you’ll want a lift. Jump in!”
“Thanks,” said Colin, “but we’re living at this next farm.”
“Get into the back.”
“No, really. It’s only a few yards.”
“Get in!”
“But we …”
The