“tidy the room,” said Johnnie;

“fetch the turf,” said Tommy;

“pick up the chips,” said Johnnie;

“sort your scraps,” said Tommy;

“and do everything.  Oh!  I wish he hadn’t gone away.”

“What’s that?” said the Tailor, coming in at this moment.

“It’s the Brownie, Father,” said Tommy.  “We are so sorry he went, and do so wish we had one.”

“What nonsense have you been telling them, Mother?” asked the Tailor.

“Heighty teighty,” said the old lady, bristling.  “Nonsense, indeed!  As good men as you, son Thomas, would as soon have jumped off the crags, as spoken lightly of them, in my mother’s young days.”

“Well, well,” said the Tailor, “I beg their pardon.  They never did aught for me, whatever they did for my forbears; but they’re as welcome to the old place as ever, if they choose to come.  There’s plenty to do.”

“Would you mind our setting a pan of water, Father?” asked Tommy very gently.  “There’s no bread-and-milk.”

“You may set what you like, my lad,” said the Tailor; “and I wish there were bread-and-milk for your sakes, bairns.  You should have it, had I got it.  But go to bed now.”

They lugged out a pancheon, and filled it with more dexterity than usual, and then went off to bed, leaving the knife in one corner, the wood in another, and a few splashes of water in their track.

There was more room than comfort in the ruined old farm-house, and the two boys slept on a bed of cut heather, in what had been the old malt-loft.  Johnnie was soon in the land of dreams, growing rosier and rosier as he slept, a tumbled apple among the grey heather.  But not so lazy Tommy.  The idea of a domesticated Brownie had taken full possession of his mind; and whither Brownie had gone, where he might be found, and what would induce him to return, were mysteries he longed to solve.  “There’s an owl living in the old shed by the mere,” he thought.  “It may be the Old Owl herself, and she knows, Granny says.  When Father’s gone to bed, and the moon rises, I’ll go.”  Meanwhile he lay down.

* * * * *

The moon rose like gold, and went up into the heavens like silver, flooding the moors with a pale ghostly light, taking the colour out of the heather, and painting black shadows under the stone walls.  Tommy opened his eyes, and ran to the window.  “The moon has risen,” said he, and crept softly down the ladder, through the kitchen, where was the pan of water, but no Brownie, and so out on to the moor.  The air was fresh, not to say chilly; but it was a glorious night, though everything but the wind and Tommy seemed asleep.  The stones, the walls, the gleaming lanes, were so intensely still; the church tower in the valley seemed awake and watching, but silent; the houses in the village round it had all their eyes shut, that is, their window-blinds down; and it seemed to Tommy as if the very moors had drawn white sheets over them, and lay sleeping also.