She stared sadly at the oval framed portrait hanging above the fireplace mantelpiece. Captain Rodney Winn,
R.N., stood frozen in time there, dapper as a new pin in his number-one dress uniform, complete with medals, braid,
and bars. His peaked cap was tucked under one arm, a strong right hand resting on a table that contained a potted
aspidistra and a Moroccan leather-bound Bible. Not a hair of his white goatee was out of place. Square-jawed and
resolute, the captain had steady blue eyes that commanded all he surveyed, a man among men. Hero of the Sevastopol
blockade and many other naval encounters in the Crimean War of the 1850s. Now sadly deceased.
The parlor window shuddered under the impact of a bloated dead toad, which fell onto the outside sill. Chanting
broke out anew as Mrs. Winn rose stiffly from her chair and made for the door.
"Winnie the Witch with the wrinkly face, come on out and give us a chase!"
She collected her cleaning equipment and opened the door slowly. Horatio slid by her, his tail curling sleekly.
He watched as the old lady placed mop and bucket to one side. Taking a straw-fringed brush, she began sweeping the
broken soil clod from her porch onto the flower bed below.
"Look, Winnie the Witch is going to chase us on her broom. See, I told you she was a real witch!"
Shaking her broom at the rhododendrons, Mrs. Winn called out. "Don't be so silly, go away and leave us alone,
you naughty children. Have you nothing better to do?"
Derisive laughter hooted out from behind the bushes. "There's her black cat, all witches have got a black cat!"
Dipping her mop in the bucket of soapy water, Mrs. Winn began cleaning mud smears from her neat green door
with its polished brass knocker and letter box, crying out as she did, "II you don't go away, I'll fetch a policeman!"
"Haha, fetch the bobbies. We don't care, old pruneface!"
Wearily the old woman carried her cleaning stuff down to the front lawn. Flicking the bloated toad carcass from
the sill, she started in mopping the filth from the parlor windowpanes.
Again a voice challenged her.
"Hurry up, Winnie, fly off and bring the bobby, hah. Fat lot of good that'll do you!"
She knew they were right. Her tormentors would leave the moment she made a move for the police, but once
the constable had come and gone, they would return to renew the persecution. It was an all-too-familiar pattern during
the last months. Her house was isolated, standing alone on the far hill slope outside the village. She had no neighbors
to call upon for help. Clamping her jaw resolutely, she grabbed her pail of soapy water and hurled it at the bushes. It
fell short, splashing on the lawn. This caused great hilarity from the gang in hiding. They rattled the bushes until
several clumps of rhododendron blossoms fell to the ground.
"Hahaha! Silly old witch, you missed! Witchie, witchie!"
Horatio's tail swirled around the doorjamb. He stalked smoothly back into the house. Mrs. Winn watched him
go. She swayed slightly in the hot afternoon sun, wiping a bent wrist across her forehead, then, gathering up her
cleaning implements, she trekked wearily in after the cat. As she closed the front door, a fresh battery of rubbish
rattled against the panels outside.
"Winn, Winn, Winnie the Witch! Hahahahaha!"
Striving to ignore the children, she boiled a kettle and made tea, pouring some into a saucer and adding extra
milk for the cat. Horatio liked the drink of milky tea. She stroked the back of his head as he bent to lap it up.
"They won't leave us alone, Horatio. If it's not those youngsters, then it's Obadiah Smithers with his legal
notices, trying to get me out. Oh dear, Horatio, only one week left after today. Those lawyers from London will be
here to enforce the clearance notices—I could lose my house! Unbelievable! And the village, oh, Horatio, the poor
village."
Horatio licked a paw and wiped it carefully over one ear, staring solemnly at her, as if expecting an answer to
the problem. However, it never came. Mrs. Winn sat looking at her work-worn hands, a tidy, plump little old lady,
with silver hair swept into a bun, her slippered feet scarcely touching the rustic, tiled floor from the chair she sat in.
Outside the golden afternoon rolled by, punctuated by the guffaws and mocking comments from behind the
rhododendrons. Mrs. Winn toyed absently with her thin, gold wedding band, turning it upon her finger. From out in
the mosaic-tiled hallway, flat chimes from a walnut-cased grandfather clock announced the arrival of half past three.
A shaft of sunlight from the kitchen window, which illuminated the old woman's chair, had shifted slightly, leaving
her face in the shade. Her half-filled teacup stood on the table in its Crown Derby saucer, a wedding present from her
favorite aunt. The tea had grown cold.
She closed her eyes, trying to shut out the din from outside. It was no use, an afternoon nap was out of the
question. Horatio prowled about for a while, choosing finally to settle at her feet. Mrs Winn was seldom prone to
feeling sorry for herself, but now she dabbed away a threatening tear with her apron corner. Clenching a fist in a
sudden show of temper, she spoke to her cat. "Ooh! If only somebody would happen along and teach those wretches
outside a lesson! ... If only ..."
Then she sat staring at the white-and-blue flower-patterned tiles around her kitchen sink. Some summer after-
noons could be very lonely for an old widow and her cat.
13.
BEN AND NED WERE WALKING ALONG TO-gether, still discussing the merits and drawbacks of barns. In
the absence of anything better, the dog was warming to the idea. "I like lots of nice deep straw in a barn. Good fun,
straw is. You can roll about in it and jump off bales."
Ben smiled mischievously as he answered his dog's thought. "Huh, you can brush your own self off tomorrow if
you're planning on rolling about in straw all night. I'm not your kennel maid."
The Labrador looked indignant. "Never said y'were, and by the way, when did I last roll about in a barnful of
straw, eh?" Ben mused a moment before answering. "Er, April the ninth, 1865, if I remember rightly. The day Robert
E. Lee surrendered to Grant. We were in a barn somewhere outside Kansas City."
"Oh yes, you jumped on my head, I remember that much!"
"Had to jump on your fat head. Otherwise you'd have kicked off doing your barking exercises and betrayed us
to those renegades. Don't forget, Ned, I saved you from becoming a dogskin saddlebag."
The Labrador sniffed airily. "Thank you kindly, young sir, but this isn't the American Civil War. 'Tis nought but
a sleepy English backwater village. I'll bark to my heart's content. Got to exercise the old bark now and again, y'know.
Never can tell when it'll come in useful!"
Ben halted. "Quiet, Ned, d'you hear that? Sounds like shouting?"
The dog's keen ears raised. "It is shouting. 'Winnie the Witch with the crinkly face, come on out and give us a
chase.' Might be some type of quaint local custom, eh, Ben?"
As they rounded a tree-fringed bend, Ben caught sight of the big, old, redbrick house, standing alone on the
hillside.
"What did Alex say that gang's name was, Ned?"
"Er, the Grange Gang, I think. Why?"
"I think we may have found them. Come on, let's go and take a quiet peep at what's going on."
There were ten of them altogether, led by Wilf Smithers and his cousin Regina Woodworthy. Wilf kept the
others busy searching for more ammunition to throw, whilst he and Regina stood by, shaking the rhododendron