While speaking, they had rounded the ragged side of Yar Tor, and then proceeding, passed to the north by some ancient hut circles of the old stone men. Following a wall, where the hill sloped, they found themselves confronted with the bird’s-eye view of a lonely, thatched cottage. Below it the land sank with abruptness; before the entrance extended a square patch of garden. No sign of life marked the spot; but as the men climbed down a pathway through withered fern, they aroused a bob-tailed, blue-eyed sheep-dog which leapt, gaunt and apelike, to the limit of its tether and barked wildly at the intruders. A naked austerity, a transparent innocence and poverty, marked the spot to casual eyes. “Down these winding ways, or else out of the woods below, come Mother Gurney’s ‘sailor sons’ with their packs and barrels hid under innocent peat and rushes, no doubt,” commented Timothy. Then John Aggett knocked at the door with a modest tap and young Chave noted that he spat over his left shoulder before doing so. “’Tis plaguey hard to be upsides wi’ a witch, I do assure ’e; but she’m a wonnerful clever woman, as all in these paarts do very well knaw,” confessed John. CHAPTER III Gammer Gurney dwelt quite alone and none had seen the alleged mariner her son, for the occasions of his visits were hidden in nocturnal mystery. Upon one point at least no doubt existed: the dame could vend choicest cognac to a favoured few at a shilling a pint; and those whom it concerned also knew that no such tobacco as that she sold, whether for smoking or chewing, might be otherwise procured nearer than Exeter. There was a whisper, too, of French silks and laces, concerning which the wives of the quality could have told a tale; and gossips of that district were prepared to swear upon the Book how more than once in moments of high excitement Gammer Gurney had uttered words and whole sentences of words in a heathen tongue. Yet, despite her powers and accomplishments, she always went her humble rounds with an old donkey in an older cart. Ostensibly she purchased rags and bones and other waste from farm kitchens; and those who knew not her peculiarities and pitied her lean apparition in its iron pattens, old sunbonnet and “dandy-gorisset” gown, would give her cast-off garments and orts from the table to keep life in her. Others, better informed, well understood what was hidden in the donkey cart, and Gammer came as an honoured if a secret guest to many a great house on the countryside. Indeed half a hundred sea-dogs were her sons, and the smugglers thought a ten-mile tramp over Dartmoor no hardship when the Gammer’s great discretion and the liberality of her prices for matters contraband came to be considered. In addition to these dark practices Mother Gurney was reputed a witch in her own right, but a witch of the better sort—a white wonder-worker, whose marvellous knowledge enabled her to combat the black necromancers that haunted Devon