After that they soon stumbled upon the truth. It had been whispered about the place that Peter was dabbling in witchcraft for Pendoggat's detriment; and Annie Crocker had heard the whisper. To inform her master was an act of ordinary enjoyment. He had sworn at her, professed contempt for Peter and all his dolls, stated his intention of destroying them, or at least of obtaining the legal benefit conferred by certain ancient Acts of Parliament dealing with witches; but in his heart he was horribly afraid. He spent hours watching the huts, and when he saw the inhabitants move away he would go near, hoping to steal the clay doll and destroy it; but Peter's door was always locked. At last he hit upon the plan of frightening the superstitious little man by addressing him through the medium of the clock. He thought he had succeeded. Perhaps he would have done so had Mary's keen eyes not detected the scrap of gorse which his departure had snapped from one of the hurdles which made the door of the linhay. Pendoggat might be a strong man physically, able to bully the weak, or bring a horse to its knees, but his mind was made of rotten stuff, and it is the strong mind rather than the stalwart body which saves a man when "Ephraim's Pinch" comes. Pendoggat's knees became wobbly whenever he thought of Peter and his clay doll. When the blue mist had cleared off, snow began to fall in a business-like way, and before the last light had been extinguished in the twin villages the moor was buried. Peter thought he would watch beside the well during the early part of the night, to see the little people dragging up his crock of gold, for he had not altogether abandoned the idea that it had been witchcraft and not Pendoggat which had conferred upon Grandfather the gift of a tongue, but the snow made his plan impossible. He and Mary sat together and talked in a subdued fashion. Peter knitted a pair of stockings for his sister, while Mary mended her brother's boots and hammered snow-nails into the soles. A new mommet had been made, broken up, and its fragments were placed beside the well, while the original doll baked resignedly upon Mary's hearthstone. Pendoggat or pixies the savages were a match for either. It remained calm upon the moor, but the snow continued most of the night with a slight southerly drift, falling in the dense masses which people who live upon mountains have to put up with.