“Why did the railway fall into ruin?” asked Julian. “The rails are all overgrown with heather and grass now. You can hardly see them.”

“Well, now we come to that there Mystery you keep on about,” said Ben, taking an extra big puff at his pipe. “Them Bartles fell foul of the gypsies up on the moor...”

“Oh, were there gypsies on the moor then?” said Dick. “There are some now!”

“Oh ay, there’s always been gypsies on the moor, long as I can remember,” said the blacksmith. “Well, it’s said them gypsies quarrelled with the Bartles, and it wasn’t hard to do that, most people did! And the gypsies pulled up bits of the line, here and there, and the little injin toppled over and pulled the trucks with it.”

The children could quite well imagine the little engine puffing along, coming to the damaged rails and falling over. What a to-do there must have been up on the moor then!

“The Bartles weren’t ones to put up with a thing like that,” said Ben, “so they set about to drive all the gypsies off the moor, and they swore that if so much as one caravan went there, they’d set fire to it and chase the gypsies over to the coast and into the sea!”

“They must have been a fierce family,” said Anne.

“You’re right there,” said Ben. “All nine or ten of them were big upstanding men, with great shaggy eyebrows that almost hid their eyes, and loud voices. Nobody dared to cross them. If they did, they’d have the whole family on their door-step with sticks. They ruled this place, they did, and my, they were hated! Us children ran off as soon as we saw one coming round a corner.”

“What about the gypsies? Did the Bartles manage to drive them off the moor?” asked George, impatiently.

“Now you let me go my own pace,” said Ben, pointing at her with his pipe. “You want a Bartle after you, young sir, that’s what you want!” He thought she was a boy, of course. He did something to his pipe and made them all wait a little. Julian winked at the others. He liked this old fellow with his long, long memories.

“Now, you can’t cross the gypsies for long,” said Ben, at last. ‘That’s a fact, you can’t. And one day all them Bartles disappeared and never came back home. No, not one of them. All that was left of the family was little lame Agnes, their sister.”

Everyone exclaimed in surprise and old Ben looked round with satisfaction. Ah, he could tell a story, he could!

“But whatever happened?” said Henry.

“Well, no one rightly knows,” said Ben. “It happened in a week when the mist came swirling over the moors and blotted everything out. Nobody went up there except the Bartles, and they were safe because all they had to do was to follow their railway lines there and back. They went up to the quarry each day the mist was there, and worked the same as usual. Nothing stopped they Bartles from working!”