Chapter VIII: In Witch’s Wood

She stood perfectly still and gazed at the feather for a moment. Then she leaned over the fence to see if there was anything else to be seen.

“If there was a sign of any one--” said Betty aloud, as she broke off suddenly and stood still by the fence trying to think out the idea that had come to her. “Why,” she went on, “I said the word ‘sign,’ and I never realized that it’s a Guide word. Eve was talking about ‘sign’ at the Guiding lesson. She was showing us how to track snails by the ‘sign’ of their silvery trails in the garden. She told me to remember the story of Hop o’ my Thumb, too, and his ‘sign’ that he laid down so that his brothers should find their way home. And one minute ago I was saying there might be ‘sign’ here. I know what I shall do!”

She did it, too. Why not? She was over the fence at once. After all, she had an hour to spare, and the girls had told her that the school wood was not forbidden. They had said that they often went there, and although Betty herself had entered into her third week at St. Benedick’s without as yet visiting the wood herself, yet that was only because there had been so many other things to do.

Now the moment had come, however. She clambered over the fence and reached the other side, intent on discovering whether there really was a “piper of dreams.”

The tracking of “sign” is not easy for a beginner--especially alone and in the deepness of a wood. In the Guiding lesson over which Eve had presided the older girl had helped the younger ones more than Betty had realized until she started off on this quest of her own. Also being on the tiptoe of excitement, and forgetting to “hasten slowly,” she was inclined to jump to conclusions too readily. She took a lightning glance round.

“If somebody’s been, where did they come from? Have they left any tracks? If so, I’ve got to find them. That’s the sort of thing Eve would say,” she told herself. Then she stood still for a moment, and certainly noticed that close under the fence, in the shadow of a tree trunk, there was a heap of leaves which had recently been disturbed.

This might be “sign,” she thought eagerly. The leaves seemed pressed down, as though some one might have been crouching there--a wild thing of the wood, perhaps. Betty was off and away, taking her path through the trees.

Once among them, however, she lost all trace of more “sign.” The wood seemed bigger, too, than she had expected when once she had got beyond the first beeches past a clearing which was carpeted with beech mast, and then to a grove of trees beyond. As the others said, the school wood seemed to have no approach from the road at all. Behind her, as she knew, were the school grounds; but, if she had not known they were so close, she would have felt herself very far indeed from any human habitation in the stillness of the wood.

For overhead the trees seemed sighing as though they held secrets that they never meant to tell except in a language of their own which no one but themselves could ever understand. Underfoot the dry leaves crackled, and occasionally a bird, taking the rustling path itself, caused Betty to look round hopefully.

“I never knew before that birds’ steps could sound so loud in a wood,” thought she. “That’s three times I’ve turned round, and it’s always been a thrush pecking under the leaves. Well, that’s something about birds, I suppose, that I’ve learned at first-hand, like Eve told us to try to do in Guide lesson. I shall tell her next time.”

But Betty was beginning to feel rather disappointed, for she had found out absolutely nothing to help her in her quest. “I’ve been too ‘helter-skelter,’ that’s what Sybil would say,” she remarked to herself. “Well, I’d better go back and try again to-morrow.”

But going back was not quite so simple a course as she had expected. She had forgotten to notice any distinguishing features on any of the trees, and now they all seemed alike.

“Here’s a hurdle sort of thing. Did I pass it before?” she asked herself. “And that tree; it looks familiar somehow. If I only knew which way St. Benedick’s lies! The rest of the Guides have compasses, and Gerry said they made it much easier to find one’s way. I shall ask her to-morrow. But now I don’t know exactly where I am.” She turned and walked on. “I rather think, if I pass these trees, that I see that clearing-place beginning again just beyond.”

She was not in the least nervous, for, after all, the school must be very near. The adventure was “thrilly,” she decided. It was not until the next trees had been passed, and the “clearing-place” reached, that Betty suddenly stood still and stared.

“Why!” she said.

For this was not the bare patch between the trees which she had passed before--just beyond the beeches which separated it from St. Benedick’s. This was a clearing, certainly, but quite a different one. The ground was studded with clumps of bracken and with tussocks of blue-bells; but there was something else in the clearing too.

A cottage! A little tumble-down desolate cottage! And at the sight of it Betty stood perfectly still, staring with eyes filled with wonder.

“I’ve come wrong! It’s the witch’s cottage,” she said. “Oh, you _poor_ thing!”

For if ever a tiny forsaken dwelling was in need of Betty’s motherly ministrations, this cottage certainly seemed that one. The fact that it was presumably “haunted,” and shunned by the villagers in consequence; the fact that a witch might still have her abode there; even the fact that she herself must certainly be considered by the law in the light of a trespasser, were forgotten as she gazed.

“I must be in Witch’s Wood,” she said to herself. “Rene said it was close; but I didn’t understand that I could come into it without knowing. A fence, she said. Well, that hurdle thing must have been part of a broken-down old fence. I’ve come a good way too.”

But she was hurrying forward all the same as she spoke. For she couldn’t do anything else. She could not turn back until she had “done something” for the little place which looked so desperately in need of mothering. Its roof was broken, if a roof the cottage could still be said to possess. Its door seemed to flap open mournfully. Its windows were cracked and broken. Mosses and lichens grew on its walls. Desolation seemed to be its very name. Betty broke into a run, therefore; then, as she reached its step, she hesitated before she entered.

“I suppose I may! Oh, I must! No one lives here. Rene said so.” In she went.

A two-roomed little one-storied cottage. Its two rooms opened into each other, and the door between gaped wide. As Betty entered the first room she could survey the entire house.

Was it a witch’s cottage? she asked herself suddenly, as she stood there staring. _Could_ it be, after all?

For, absolutely empty of furnishings as it certainly was, with its paper peeling miserably from its walls; with damp running down them; with insects holding carnival in its corners; with its shutters flapping by rusty hinges outside its broken panes--yet--yet, strange and wonderful to say, arranged in a primitive design on the dirty floor of the room, lay flowers! Fresh and fragrant, in a quaint, almost elfin-like pattern. Wild hyacinths, late primroses, anemones, stars of Bethlehem--the floor of the room seemed carpeted with them as though some quaint idea of design had been at the back of some one’s mind. For “some one” must have done it--a “some one,” Betty was certain, who must be of fairy origin.

“I _am_ trespassing,” she said suddenly out loud. And she turned and found herself hurrying away, though she couldn’t have expressed the reason of her flight in words. “Some one is looking after it. It isn’t so miserable as it looks outside,” she told herself, as she ran with her heart thumping. “It must be a fairy house.”

But as her heart stopped thumping she began to try to think things out more common-sensibly. “I’m thirteen,” said Betty to herself; “and though Sybil does say that fairies aren’t babyish to believe in, yet I do know that to find a cottage like that is absolutely queer. Jan and Jack would believe in it, but I hardly can. Still it was there; and the wood is called Witch’s Wood by everybody. And Rene says that the villagers are afraid of it. I could never be _afraid_ of whoever it is who puts those flowers there. Not that it can be haunted--” She broke off. “Well, now, I simply _must_ find my way out,” she said, trying to banish the mystery of the cottage from her mind.

It was a difficult business, but she managed at last. After turning and twisting through the trees of Witch’s Wood, she came suddenly at last within sight and sound of the everyday humdrum world again.

“I’m evidently some way from St. Benedick’s,” she thought, “but I’m coming out at last. I can see a road; and when I get to the fence, any one I meet will show me the way. Why, what’s that?”

For she had reached the fence now, and voices were plainly audible from the road below. Lusty laughter and shoutings; evidently a crowd of village urchins were playing there. Betty made up her mind to wait until they had passed by. She did not wish to make a descent from Witch’s Wood until the coast was clear of them. She peeped through the broken palings and then suddenly changed her mind.

For a whole crowd of good-for-nothing small boys had collected, and were circling round one of their number who seemed to Betty, from her hiding-place, the queerest figure on which she had ever set eyes. He was a tall boy of perhaps her own age, but tattered and torn as she had never seen a boy before; his garments seemed quaint, too, almost ludicrous, and he seemed trying, as he stood there, to hold his own unaided against the jeering, cat-calling throng.

At the sight Betty’s eyes blazed, and she was over the fence like a flash. “Let him alone this instant,” called she to the amazed and terrified group.

For terrified they were at the sight of her, appearing as she did over the fence of Witch’s Wood. In one instant, to a boy, the crowd had dispersed in the opposite direction, leaving their victim alone.

The stranger might have been aged fourteen, but his clothes were evidently intended for a younger boy by far, and they had been patched and mended so thoroughly, and with such disregard for colour-matching, that he seemed to possess a piebald appearance. His head was covered, too, with a shock of the roughest hair Betty had ever seen; and by the expression of his face it was plain that he was simple-minded. His cheek was cut and bleeding too; but he seemed to take little notice of his hurts. Instead, he made straight for Betty, shaking his fist and pointing to the wood.

“You munna go nigh Witch’s Wood. You munna. You munna go nigh it. There’s witches in it, and ghostses, and spookses; you munna go nigh it.” He shook and shivered as he pointed there.

“It’s all right,” said Betty in her motherly tone. “Don’t worry. I lost my way; but I shan’t go there again. If you will tell me where there is a stream, I’d like to wash that cut, though, on your cheek.”