The Greatest Supernatural Tales of Sheridan Le Fanu (70+ Titles in One Edition). M. R. James

      In this there was a wooden gate, rudely but strongly constructed, and at the side we were approaching stood a girl, who was leaning against the post, with one arm resting on the top of the gate.

      This girl was neither tall nor short — taller than she looked at a distance; she had not a slight waist; sooty black was her hair, with a broad forehead, perpendicular but low; she had a pair of very fine, dark, lustrous eyes, and no other good feature — unless I may so call her teeth, which were very white and even. Her face was rather short, and swarthy as a gipsy’s; observant and sullen too; and she did not move, only eyed us negligently from under her dark lashes as we drew near. Altogether a not unpicturesque figure, with a dusky, red petticoat of drugget, and tattered jacket of bottle-green stuff, with short sleeves, which showed her brown arms from the elbow.

      “That’s Pegtop’s daughter,” said Milly.

      “Who is Pegtop?” I asked.

      “He’s the miller — see, yonder it is,” and she pointed to a very pretty feature in the landscape, a windmill, crowning the summit of a hillock which rose suddenly above the level of the tree-tops, like an island in the centre of the valley.

      “The mill not going to-day, Beauty?” bawled Milly.

      “No-a, Beauty; it baint,” replied the girl, loweringly, and without stirring.

      “And what’s gone with the stile?” demanded Milly, aghast. “It’s tore away from the paling!”

      “Well, so it be,” replied the wood nymph in the red petticoat, showing her fine teeth with a lazy grin.

      “Who’s a bin and done all that?” demanded Milly.

      “Not you nor me, lass,” said the girl.

      “’Twas old Pegtop, your father, did it,” cried Milly, in rising wrath.

      “‘Appen it wor,” she replied.

      “And the gate locked.”

      “That’s it — the gate locked,” she repeated, sulkily, with a defiant side-glance at Milly.

      “And where’s Pegtop?”

      “At t’other side, somewhere; how should I know where he be?” she replied.

      “Who’s got the key?”

      “Here it be, lass,” she answered, striking her hand on her pocket.

      “And how durst you stay us here? Unlock it, huzzy, this minute!” cried Milly, with a stamp.

      Her answer was a sullen smile.

      “Open the gate this instant!” bawled Milly.

      “Well, I won’t.”

      I expected that Milly would have flown into a frenzy at this direct defiance, but she looked instead puzzled and curious — the girls’ unexpected audacity bewildered her.

      “Why, you fool, I could get over the paling as soon as look at you, but I won’t. What’s come over you? Open the gate, I say, or I’ll make you.”

      “Do let her alone, dear,” I entreated, fearing a mutual assault. “She has been ordered, may be, not to open it. Is it so, my good girl?”

      “Well, thou’rt not the biggest fool o’ the two,” she observed, commendatively, “thou’st hit it, lass.”

      “And who ordered you?” exclaimed Milly.

      “Father.”

      “Old Pegtop. Well, that’s summat to laugh at, it is — our servant a-shutting us out of our own grounds.”

      “No servant o’ yourn!”

      “Come, lass, what do you mean?”

      “He be old Silas’s miller, and what’s that to thee?”

      With these words the girl made a spring on the hasp of the padlock, and then got easily over the gate.

      “Can’t you do that, cousin?” whispered Milly to me, with an impatient nudge. “I wish you’d try.”

      “No, dear — come away, Milly,” and I began to withdraw.

      “Lookee, lass, ’twill be an ill day’s work for thee when I tell the Governor,” said Milly, addressing the girl, who stood on a log of timber at the other side, regarding us with a sullen composure.

      “We’ll be over in spite o’ you,” cried Milly.

      “You lie!” answered she.

      “And why not, huzzy?” demanded my cousin, who was less incensed at the affront than I expected. All this time I was urging Milly in vain to come away.

      “Yon lass is no wild cat, like thee — that’s why,” said the sturdy portress.

      “If I cross, I’ll give you a knock,” said Milly.

      “And I’ll gi’ thee another,” she answered, with a vicious wag of the head.

      “Come, Milly, I’ll go if you don’t,” I said.

      “But we must not be beat,” whispered she, vehemently, catching my arm; “and ye shall get over, and see what I will gi’ her!”

      “I’ll not get over.”

      “Then I’ll break the door, for ye shall come through,” exclaimed Milly, kicking the stout paling with her ponderous boot.

      “Purr it, purr it, purr it,” cried the lass in the red petticoat with a grin.

      “Do you know who this lady is?” cried Milly, suddenly.

      “She is a prettier lass than thou,” answered Beauty.

      “She’s my cousin Maud — Miss Ruthyn of Knowl — and she’s a deal richer than the Queen; and the Governor’s taking care of her; and he’ll make old Pegtop bring you to a reason.”

      The girl eyed me with a sulky listlessness, a little inquisitively, I thought.

      “See if he don’t,” threatened Milly.

      “You positively must come,” I said, drawing her away with me.

      “Well, shall we come in?” cried Milly, trying a last summons.

      “You’ll not come in that much,” she answered, surlily, measuring an infinitesimal distance on her finger with her thumb, which she pinched against it, the gesture ending with a snap of defiance, and a smile that showed her fine teeth.

      “I’ve a mind to shy a stone at you,” shouted Milly.

      “Faire away; I’ll shy wi’ ye as long as ye like, lass; take heed o’ yerself;” and Beauty picked up a round stone as large as a cricket ball.

      With difficulty I got Milly away without an exchange of missiles, and much disgusted at my want of zeal and agility.

      “Well, come along, cousin. I know an easy way by the river, when it’s low,” answered Milly. “She’s a brute — is not she?”

      As we receded, we saw the girl slowly wending her way towards the old thatched cottage, which showed its gable from the side of a little rugged eminence embowered in spreading trees, and dangling and twirling from its string on the end of her finger the key for which a battle had so nearly been fought.

      The stream was low enough to make our flank movement round the end of the paling next it quite easy, and so we pursued our way, and Milly’s equanimity returned, and our ramble grew very pleasant again.

      Our path lay by the river bank, and as we proceeded, the dwarf timber was succeeded by grander trees, which crowded closer and taller, and, at last, the scenery deepened into solemn forest, and a sudden sweep in the river revealed the beautiful ruin of a steep old bridge, with the fragments of a gate-house on the farther side.

      “Oh,