Page:Anthony John (IA anthonyjohn00jero).pdf/51

 winding Wyndbeck, now flowing black and sluggish through long dark echoing tunnels past slimy walls and wharves, was then a silvery stream splashing and foaming among tree-crowned rocks and mossy boulders. Where now tall chimneys belch their smoke and the slag stands piled in endless heaps around the filthy pits, sheep browsed and cattle grazed and little piebald pigs nuzzled for truffles in the soft sweet-smelling earth. The valley of the Wyndbeck then would have been a fair place to dwell in but for evil greedy men who preyed upon the people, driving off their cattle and stealing their crops, making sport of their tears and prayers. And of all the wicked men who harassed and oppressed them none were so cruel and grasping as Aldys of the yellow beard—the Red Badger they called him.

One day the Badger was returning from a foray, and beside him, on an old gaunt pony, secured by a stirrup-leather to the Badger's saddle-girth, rode a little lad. A trooper had found the boy wandering among the blackened ruins, and the Badger, attracted by the lad's beauty, had taken him to be his page.

The Badger rode, singing, pleased with his day's work; and there crept up a white mist from the sea. He did not notice for a time that he and the lad