between my teeth, and turn my head down hill, and I will shake him off with a fall that may harm his bones—And I should not like much to hurt him neither,” said he, “for the tiresome old fool has painfully laboured to teach me all he could.—But enough of that—here are we at Wayland Smith’s forge-door.”
“You jest, my little friend,” said Tressilian; here is nothing but a bare moor, and that ring of stones, with a great one in the midst, like a Cornish barrow.”
“Ay, and that great flat stone in the midst, which lies across the top of these uprights,” said the boy, “is Wayland Smith’s counter, that you must tell down your money upon.”
“What do you mean by such folly?” said the traveller, beginning to be angry with the boy, and vexed with himself for having trusted such a hare-brained guide.
“Why,” said Dickie, with a grin, “you must tie your horse to that upright stone that has the ring in’t, and then you must whistle three times, and lay me down your silver groat on that other flat stone, walk out of the circle, sit down on the west side of that little thicket of bushes, and take heed you look neither to right nor to left for ten minutes, or so long as you shall hear the hammer clink, and whenever it ceases, say your prayers for the space you could tell a hundred, or count over a hundred, which will do as well,—and then come into the circle; you will find your money gone and—your horse shod.”
