The Whispering Mountain by Joan Aiken

her hiding-place until they were some distance off, and it was a good thing she waited, for after about five minutes she heard one of the men returning, much more quietly, though he panted a good deal and sometimes let out a bad word.
    â€œWhere the deuce is the miching thing, then?” she heard him mutter. “I made sure we laid it hereabouts. Aha! There she be! Now, let’s fool old Bilk, let’s lay her in another o’ these here vaultages, down there-along.”
    Arabis, craning out warily from her nest of fern, saw him withdraw a large sacking-wrapped bundle from the cave-mouth underneath, and transfer it to another hole in the cliff some twenty yards distant. In the still morning air she distinctly heard him chuckle to himself as he retreated through the bushes:

    â€œOh, won’t old Bilk-o be set back on his pantofles when he finds the bandore’s not there any more. Ho, ho, I can’t wait to see his nab!”
    He disappeared in the direction of the town. Five minutes went by, and still Arabis, with her habitual caution, remained crouched in the fern. Then a dark figure rose up from behind a curtain of ivy on her left, and made its way towards the bundle’s new resting-place.
    â€œThought you’d diddle me, eh, Prigman, my sprag young co? Think yourself tricksy as a weasel, eh? But old Bilk knows a prank worth two o’ that. Just you wait, my woodcock!”
    He withdrew the bundle once more, and moved it to yet another cave mouth. Arabis heard him grunt to himself:
    â€œYou lay there, my pretty, and old Bilk’ll be back for you afore Turpentine Sunday. Then us’ll turn you over to the highest bidder. And then it’ll be velvet gaskins and satin galleyslops for Sir Toby Bilk, ah, and a cloth o’ gold weskit and frumenty every night!”
    Chuckling deeply, he, too, made off in the direction of the town.
    â€œWell!” Arabis said to herself. “There goes a fine pair of rapscallions, each one cheating the other! But I’d dearly like to know what this treasure is they’ve been so careful to hide away.”
    The sky was now quite light; indeed the first rays of the sun were beginning to gild the tops of the distant Black Mountains, though the gorge of Nant Agerddau still lay in shadow under the great peak of Fig-hat Ben. Looking down towards the little grey stone town Arabis could see a few threads of smoke beginning to trail upwards from
the chimneys. Between her and the houses stretched the flat quarry floor, now overgrown with a thick carpet of moss and lichen. Here the gypsies and fair people had pitched their tents and halted their gaily-coloured caravans, but as near to the town and as far from the quarry-face as possible, for there was a general belief that the caves and cliffs hereabouts were haunted by little black, furry, elvish people who came out at night, and who had a thieving and malicious disposition. It was said that strange lights shone at midnight in the caves, that weird wailing sounds could sometimes be heard; anybody who saw the lights or heard the sounds was supposed to be in danger of becoming deaf and blind. These beings were referred to politely as the Tylwyth Teg, the Fair People, but some townsfolk asserted that the name should really be Fur People, or Fur Niskies, and many believed that they were the black imps of Old Bogey-Boo himself. Arabis, however, did not worry about such tales; she had never met anybody who could truly say they had seen the little people, nor had she herself, but if she did, she felt sure she would not fear them.
    Having now made sure that both men had really gone, she slipped down from her oak tree and gathered an apronful of ferns. Then, stooping to pick more as she went, taking care not to let her course appear too particular, she began to move towards the spot where Bilk had finally stowed the mysterious bundle.
    Much to her annoyance, just as she judged she must have reached the point where