Peggy, who always liked to be first and foremost, ran on before the others to ask for the milk, and was greeted by a furious barking from a collie-dog who guarded the doorstep, while a small, shock-headed girl peeped shyly from behind the shelter of his rough back. At the sight of a stranger she fled with a howl, for visitors were almost unknown on these heights, and the child was as wild as a young rabbit. Her cry of alarm brought out a woman, who kicked the dog yelping into the house, and looked at Peggy with as much curiosity as if she were the inhabitant of another world.
"Please can you let us have some milk?" asked Peggy politely.
"Dim Saesneg," replied the woman, shaking her head, which, being interpreted, means, "I can"t speak English."
For once Peggy was at a loss, but Father soon came to the rescue, for he had picked up a little Welsh in his expeditions on the mountains, and readily made the woman understand, in her native tongue, what they required.
The little black cow with the long horns looked strange to eyes accustomed to the large red and white cows at the Abbey, but her milk seemed sweet and good, and the woman sang a song in Welsh while she milked it, to a strange, haunting kind of melody that, like most of the Celtic music, had a touch of sadness and pathos about it.
"Ask her if she ever comes down to Gorswen, and how they get food up here," whispered Peggy to Father, anxious to be initiated into the mysteries of life among the moors.
"We don"t go down more than once a fortnight or so for flour and groceries," was the translated reply. "Then we bring it up on the donkey"s back. Oh yes, we walk ourselves all the way. What do we live on mostly? Bread and bacon, oatmeal and potatoes, and a few eggs. It"s a healthy life, but terribly cold in winter. No, I"ve never been inside Gorswen Church. We go to a little chapel up here. A preacher walks over from Llanelly when they can spare one. Lonely? Not a bit! When you have the cows and the pigs and the hens and the children to see to you"ve no time to feel lonely!"
She looked pleased, however, to have had an opportunity for a chat, and gave them a very hearty good-bye as they took the milk-can and set off again on their long tramp. When the little farm was out of sight, they seemed indeed to have left the world behind them, and to be all alone among the hills. Oh, the boundless delight of those rolling miles of heather, which looked like a crimson sea spreading onward towards the horizon, and the delicious smell of the sweet-gale as they trod it underfoot! Great flocks of plovers flew before them, screaming their "pee-wit, pee-wit!" and here and there they roused a snipe or a woodc.o.c.k, while wild little ponies scampered off like the wind, indignant at having their solitude disturbed.
The path ran for fully a mile over a bog, and the children had to follow very closely in Father"s footsteps to keep a safe track over the soft, spongy surface, for Joe had told them dark tales of pedlars, travelling from Llanrhos to Gorswen, who had sunk into those treacherous brown pools and been heard of no more.
At last, coming over a little rise, they saw in the distance the gleaming outline of a lake, looking like a patch of silver amongst the heather.
"Look!" cried Mr. Vaughan. "That is Llyn y Gaer. We shall be there in half an hour."
This was good news to Peggy and Bobby, who were beginning to think that the fishing-baskets were very heavy on their backs, and that it was the longest eight miles they had ever imagined, so they hurried after Father, who made haste now, to make up for the many halts upon the road, for the afternoon was wearing on, and there was much to be done before night. Close beside the lake, on a flat piece of gra.s.s sheltered under a high cliff, stood the shepherd"s hut, a small one-roomed shanty of rough stones piled up without either mortar or plaster, and roofed with a few tree-trunks covered with turf and heather. The tiny window was hardly a foot square, and had no gla.s.s in it, and a beautiful root of parsley fern grew luxuriantly on the sill, while all the crevices of the walls seemed full of lichens, bound together by the crimson stems of the creeping pellitory.
Father unlocked the weather-beaten door, and the children rushed in with much excitement. They saw a low room with a raftered roof, rough whitewashed walls, and an earthen floor. The whole of one side was occupied by a great fireplace, with a chimney so wide that, looking up, you could see the sky above. Grate there was none, and the fire must burn on the hearth-stone, but a good stack of dry peat and heather stood in the ingle nook, evidently left ready for use. A table, a chair, and two boxes were all the furniture, while a few cups, plates, and knives, together with a frying-pan, a kettle, and a pair of bellows, made up the rest of the modest establishment.
"Isn"t it fun?" said Peggy, putting down her heavy basket with a sigh of relief.
"I should just think so!" replied Bobby, roaming round to explore, and wondering whether it would be possible to climb up the wide chimney and peep out through the top.
"To work! To work!" cried Father. "We have no time to be idle if you want any tea! Bobby, take the kettle, and fill it from the stream outside; and Peggy, you can get some of those peats, and help me to light the fire."
Father had a newspaper and a box of matches in his pocket, so, with the help of the dry heather, they soon had a glowing red blaze, and swung the kettle on a hook, fastened to the end of a long chain, which hung, in true Welsh fashion, from a great beam fixed across the chimney.
"Now, while the water boils," said Mr. Vaughan, "we must go and pull heather for our beds, before the dew begins to fall upon it. Come along, my two subalterns, this is camp life, and you must learn to bivouac like true soldiers."
""The heath this night must be my bed, The bracken"s curtain for my head,""
sang Peggy, who had been studying the "Lady of the Lake" at school, and quoted it on all occasions. "But we ought not to have a hut at all. We should just wrap ourselves in our plaids, and lie under the "silent stars.""
"I prefer a roof over my head myself," said Father dryly. "But if you are so anxious to taste the romantic you may sleep in the cold outside.
I"m afraid I haven"t a plaidie to offer you."
"I"m sure a heather bed will be stunning!" declared Bobby. "I don"t think I shall ever want sheets and nightshirts, and horrid things of that sort, again. I"d like to be a hunter when I grow up, and always live in tents, and caves, and jolly places, like the boys in books."
"It"s just like the Swiss Family Robinson, only ever so much nicer,"
said Peggy. "I wish we lived up here, and then we shouldn"t need to go to school, and darn stockings, and do all kinds of things we hate!"
They pulled great armfuls of the delicious purple heather, and laid them on the floor close to the fire, for Father said it was chilly at nights after the sun had gone down, and they would need all the warmth they could get. The kettle was boiling noisily by this time, so the children hastened to set out the cups and plates. There was no table-cloth, but that did not matter in the least, and the absence of teaspoons was regarded as rather an advantage than otherwise. It was so quaint to sit right inside the chimney corner, and smell the delicious blue peat smoke that was curling its way to the turf roof overhead, and to look out through the open doorway at the silver lake, sending gentle ripples over the little sandy beach, and always the purple waste of heather beyond, with the mountains rising up, tier after tier, into the dim distance.
There never were such appet.i.tes. Peggy poured out, with a grand air, as if she were officiating at some Court ceremony. Aunt Helen"s hard-boiled eggs and bread-and-b.u.t.ter disappeared like magic, and the little teapot was filled again and again, till there was no more water left in the kettle.
"Bobby, you simply must stop!" said Father. "Please to remember our supplies have to last us for breakfast and lunch to-morrow. If we eat up everything so fast, we shall be obliged to go hungry before we get home again. Now I am going out to look after the sheep, and I shall leave you to clear away and wash up. If I bring you camping out up here, you must be my orderlies, and do the work. I generally put the cups into the pool outside."
"All right," said Peggy and Bobby, rattling the tea-things into the big fishing-basket with a haste calculated to break anything but the stout blue enamel ware which Aunt Helen had thoughtfully provided, and racing outside to the little stream which flowed past the cottage into the lake.
The bank shelved in one place, so as to form a shallow basin, and here the children tilted in their load, sitting down on the heather for a few minutes to wait until the running water had washed them clean.
"Take care they are not washed away into the lake!" shouted Father after them. "And keep up the fire while I am gone. I shall be in before dark."
And he went off for a weary tramp over the hills, with old Rover following closely at his heels.
"I wish we could have brought Rollo," said Bobby. "I don"t believe he would have driven the sheep all the wrong way, in spite of what Father says. David had to tie him up in the stable, so that he shouldn"t follow us."
"I know he"ll miss us dreadfully, poor darling!" said Peggy. "I hope Lilian won"t forget to give him his biscuit to-night. I asked Nancy to remember p.r.i.c.kles, and Joe promised to feed the rabbits; and if Jack doesn"t get his supper he"ll scold so dreadfully outside the kitchen door that someone is sure to hear him. Oh, Bobby! I saw a fish in the pool just then. I have two pins in my jacket, and a long piece of string in my pocket. Don"t you think we could make hooks and lines, and catch some to surprise Father when he comes back? There are lots of worms in the bank."
The tea-things were hastily collected from the stream, and the amateur anglers set to work with much enthusiasm but no success, for the fish absolutely declined to bite, in spite of the tempting bait, and lay sulkily under the stones at the bottom of the pool. It was growing quite dark before Father returned, and I think, though neither of them would have confessed it, the children were both rather relieved to hear his cheery whistle outside the door, for it was just a little eerie sitting by the peat fire in that lonely cottage, without a sound to break the vast silence, and the knowledge that the nearest human habitation lay fully three miles away; and Bobby had already asked Peggy if she believed in ghosts, and whether it was true what Joe had told him that the lights you sometimes see at night hovering over a bog are the souls of children who have never been baptized; and though Peggy had professed to laugh at the supernatural, she did not feel quite so brave as she pretended, and found little cold shivers stealing down her back when the wind rose suddenly, and began to wail round the cottage like a hungry creature waiting to be let in.
"I don"t know what you young folks are," said Mr. Vaughan, "but I"m dog-tired, and we had better go to bed, for I want to be up with the sun to-morrow."
The children were disposed to agree with him, so, simply pulling off their boots, they lay down in their clothes on the piles of fragrant heather, while Father threw thick bundles of it over them to serve instead of blankets. Heather makes one of the most delicious beds in the world. It is so soft, and yet so springy, and the purple blossom smells so sweet, that one could scarcely wish to lie easier.
Father and Bobby were asleep in two minutes, but Peggy lay awake for a long time, watching the shadows of the peat fire flicker upon the rough beams of the roof, till at length fire and heather merged into a dreamland kingdom, where she was walking with Rollo upon the clouds, and fishing teacups out of a flowing sea below.
CHAPTER X
ON THE MOORS
"No sound by night but the winds which blow, No sound by day but the water"s flow, And the wild bird"s screaming note."
In spite of the best resolutions for early rising, n.o.body woke with the sun after all, and that luminary had plenty of time to creep round and peep in through the little window before Father sprang up from his bed of heather, and exclaiming that they were late, set the children to blow the peats into life again while he took his morning bath in the lake.
Later on Peggy and Bobby followed his example. After sleeping all night in their clothes the cool plunge in the clear water was delightfully refreshing, and they sat about like mermaids on the rocks, basking in the sunshine, and watching a ring-ousel teaching her three big babies to fly, till Father called out that if they did not hurry up and come in at once he should eat all the breakfast before they arrived.
It was real fun frying rashers of bacon over the fire, especially when Peggy nearly upset the pan in her excitement, and Bobby absentmindedly sat upon the teapot, which he had put to keep warm among the peats. I am afraid poor Father had rather a distracting meal, but he cheerfully ate the smoky toast which the children provided, and did not even grumble when Peggy, by mistake, put six lumps of sugar into his tea.
"Rover and I must be off to work again this morning," he said, taking a shepherd"s crook that lay in a corner of the room, and calling the old dog from the fireside. "You youngsters had better play about near the cottage. Don"t go wandering all round the lake, or you"ll get so tired you won"t be able to walk home this afternoon."
Left alone, the children began to busy themselves with what the Americans call "ch.o.r.es." First of all the breakfast things had to be cleared away, and carried down to the stream, but, to Peggy"s dismay, the greasy bacon plates utterly refused to wash clean, however long they were left to soak in the pool, and came up in the same smeary condition in which she had put them in.
"Whatever shall we do with them? We can"t leave them dirty like this,"
she exclaimed, feeling as anxious for the credit of the establishment as any full-grown housekeeper.
"Tilt them up in a row against the cottage wall, and pour a kettleful of boiling water over them," said practical Bobby, who generally had some suggestion to offer.