To
thy speech--quick, what sawest thou?"
"I will give it all, withouten a word but what the blessed saints would
avouch," said the terrified supplicant, whose once fiery face was now
blanched, or rather dyed of a dull and various blue.
"I was wending home from Merland, where I had been helping Dan the smith
to his luckpenny, when as I took the path-road down yonder unlucky hill
to the ford, not thinking of the de'il's workmen that had flown off with
the church the night before, I was whistling, or, it mayhap,
singing,--or--or--I am not just particular to know how it was, for the
matter of it; but at any rate I was getting up, having tumbled down the
steep almost nigh to the bottom, and I thought my eyes had strucken
fire, for I saw lights frisking and frolicking up and down the hill.
Then I sat down to watch, and, sure enough, such a puck-fisted rabble,
without cloak or hosen, I never beheld--all hurry-scurry up the hill,
and some of the like were on the gallop down again. They were shouting,
and mocking, and laughing, like so many stark-mad fools at a May-feast.
They strid twenty paces at a jump, with burdens that two of the best
oxen about the manor had not shifted the length of my thumbnail.
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