At daybreak she crossed the river and went on as her master had directed her; he soon overtook her, and placing her on a pillion behind him, they cantered away through dark lanes for miles, going up hill all the time, and Robin spoke not a word. Grace, blinded with tears, saw nothing of the road till they came up into broad daylight and an open country. Still the horse went like the wind, and in a few minutes she saw Carn Kenidjack. [184] Robin stopped his horse, sprung from his saddle, lifted Grace down and placed her on the rock from which he had fetched her. In answer to her entreaties to be taken home with him again, he only said, "Prudence and I shall try to get on without other help, yet if we can't I may come for 'e again." Grace mounted the rock and looked after him as he rode away, but in a few minutes he was out of sight. She lay on the heath and wept till near night ere she arose, slowly descended the downs, and reached her parents' dwelling. The old folks were much surprised to behold her as they had given her up for lost or dead long ago. Her mother, however, in welcoming her home, lost no time before she opened her bundle, and found enough good clothes to last a lifetime, and amongst them a bag containing more money than they had ever seen before. Grace's story seemed strange to all the neighbours, but most of the elderly ones concluded from all she told them that one of the changeling small people had taken her away to his underground dwelling or into his habitation in a wood—as such places used to be their common haunts—and there she had lived with him nine years that seemed less than one to her. She could no more endure her old home—and, showing but little regard for its inmates, loathed their homely fare and old fashioned ways. Neither could she make up her mind to work steadily as of old, but like one distraught wandered away almost every day to the rock where she had first and last seen Robin of the Carn. She took but little pride in her fine clothes and money, and people thought she would go mad or fret herself to death. Yet, in a little less than two years, which seemed eternal to Grace, a neighbour's wife died leaving several small children; the widower came a courting to the distracted maiden, and, pushed his suit so vigorously, that at length she married him, and, as it happened, her husband had no cause to regret his venture, for the care of his children and plenty of work so far cured her vagaries, that in a few years she almost forgot and little regretted her life with Robin of the Carn. Grace may be still living; it is only a few years since we were told her story, and then she was a hale old woman with a numerous brood of grandchildren.