Free The Whispering Mountain by Joan Aiken

a-spotting our glim. Now, you stall there while I make things trig.” He dealt Owen a sharp clip on the ear, taking him by surprise and knocking him over. While he struggled in vain to get up, Prigman calmly struck a light, revealing a small empty room in which generations of hens had certainly roosted. Its furniture consisted of two beams crossing the room at knee-height, which had evidently served as perches. A piece of sacking hung over the one small window. There was a pile of straw against the back wall.
    â€œSnug, eh?” Prigman said cheerfully. “No one won’t live here nowadays, acos there was a bit of a landfall last Michaelmas and they reckon some day the rest o’ the mountain will come ploudering down on the roof, but I say that won’t happen till Turpentine Sunday, and meanwhile it makes a famous ken, dunnit?” Intercepting Owen’s longing glance at the straw he added, “Tired, are you, cully?” Owen nodded. “Well, soon’s you done scribing those papers for us you can snooze all you’ve a mind to.”
    Owen summoned all his resolution.

    â€œMr. Prigman,” he said firmly, “I’m not going to write any letters for you.”
    â€œAh, now, mate, don’t you be so twitty,” Prigman said earnestly. “Acos I tell you straight, my cully Bilk can’t abide to be crossed. If you cuts up rusty, it’ll be the last thing you ever does.”
    Owen felt he hardly cared. His eyes were closing, all he longed for was sleep. Death seemed just as harmless.
    â€œHey! roust there, cully!” Prigman said sharply. “You’d best get up on your stamps; no shut-eye for you till the scribing’s done.” He drew his knife and prodded Owen with it to make him stagger to his feet, helping him with a jerk of the arm.
    â€œRight; you hold up like that against the wall—here, by the beam—and I’ll lay old Biter up against your ribs so —she’s mortal sharp, ain’t she?—and you just keep your glaziers open till Bilk gets back!”
    Nobody wants a knife between the ribs. Owen dragged his eyes open and stood as straight as he could, leaning away from the point of Biter, back against the wall. Prigman, always keeping the knife steady with one hand, contrived with the other hand to drape a truss of straw across the beam and sat on it at his ease facing Owen. He then observed that he couldn’t abide the smell of cackling-cheats, which Owen took to be hens.
    An hour went by. Several times Owen nearly toppled forward and Prigman roused him by a sharp cuff or a jab with the point of Biter. Meanwhile he kept up a stream of talk to which Owen hardly listened—something about Lord Malyn’s house in London where even the door-knobs were made of gold—something about his highness the
Prince of Wales who was mortal fond of hunting the wild boar—something about the Ottoman gentleman who had travelled all the way from the Costa Fraucasus to Pennygaff—why? what could he want in such an out-of-the-way little place?—something about old Mr. Hughes, stubborn and foolhardy in refusing to hand over an object that was no possible use to him.
    At last the door flew open and Bilk lurched in, accompanied by a strong odour of metheglin.
    â€œYou been in the bousing-ken!” Prigman said indignantly. “And never brought me a dram, I’ll lay a barred cinque-deuce.”
    â€œI have, then.” Bilk produced a leather bottle.
    â€œAnd the scribing-gear?”
    â€œAy. But see here, we ain’t staying in this ken. Why, the whole miching, impasted hillside’s due to come col-loping down any day now. They was on about it in the ale-house.”
    â€œOld stuff!” Prigman said scornfully. “We knowed that afore. Don’t ferret your head about it.”
    â€œNo, but they reckon it’ll be any cockcrow now—the whole cliff’s been diddering and doddering