Free Mist Over Pendle by Robert Neill Page B

same texts; and again she quoted it easily.
    “The twentieth chapter? ‘I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.’ Is that it, Master Baldwin?”
    It was, and Master Baldwin plainly wanted to discuss it further, but Margery would have none of it. She knew that look in a puritan’s eye, and she knew the sort of talk it presaged, and at this moment she felt that she could not bear with it. Her mind was on present matters, and she wanted to know where they were, where and what this Malkin Tower might be, and some more about this woman called Demdike. She was curious, too, about this man, and about the Grace he had called his daughter. So she asked him quickly where they were.
    If he was disappointed, he hid it well. There was, as she was coming to perceive, a natural courtesy in Richard Baldwin, and it was not always over-ridden by his puritan bluntness. He looked about him shrewdly. They had come a couple of miles from the Rough Lee, and the Pendle Water had swept to the right and was now far from the road; he pointed to the curve of it.
    “You see,” he said. “The Water’s gone from the road. It turns back on itself and goes to join the Calder. But see you now.”
    They had topped a short steep slope, and before them the prospect had changed abruptly. In front of them was a long and grassy valley, rising and curving into the far distance; and here their road swung to the right, and then seemed to swing left again behind a grassy hill, as though it followed the shoulder of this valley. To their left a stony track led down to the bottom of the valley, and Margery could see its white streak as it wound up the slope beyond.
    “That’s for Wheathead,” he told her. “It would bring you to the mill where I have my home and work. And one day, mistress, if you’ll take that ride, I’ll be glad indeed to greet you there.”
    He looked across at her with a touch of shyness that sat oddly on him. Margery was in haste to answer.
    “That, sir, I’ll surely do, and soon. My thanks for those words.”
    She was both pleased and nattered. Clearly she was on the way to having his liking. Besides, she was as curious as ever, and she wanted to see his home and daughter. She would certainly visit this mill at Wheathead--but not, she thought, in orange-tawny and a plumed copintank.
    A moment’s halt was enough for Roger, and then he led them off the road, so that they were riding on the bare grass and climbing obliquely out of the valley. Again it was Richard Baldwin who explained.
    “You saw the road go round the hill? We may join it again this way. We do but shorten corners. It’s the Gisburn road and it runs along the crest of the valley.”
    His meaning was plain when they had topped the crest. Here was a windy moorland with the thin road crossing it, straight and stark.
    “And what more do you see?”
    Richard Baldwin spoke quietly, and Margery had no doubt of his meaning. Set by the road, lonely and desolate, was another of the grey stone houses, but this time a mere cottage. It stood alone, far from the life of the Forest. No outbuildings ringed it. No animals, not a cow, nor a sheep, not even a chicken, seemed to belong to it. Its only sign of life was a wisp of smoke flattening into the wind from its single chimney. It stood alone and desolate, an outcast from the dwellings of men.
    “So!” Richard Baldwin spoke with menace in his voice. “The Malkin Tower.”
    They were riding swiftly now, down the bare slope of the grass. The awful cottage drew nearer, and Margery could soon see that its desolation was not of position only. It was decayed, ramshackle, desperate. There were holes in the thatch and cracks in the walls; the bounding fence was torn into crazy gaps. But for the smoke, she would have supposed the place derelict and abandoned these twenty years. If this was a human habitation, it surely ought not