"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. 'Tis
some unlucky dream, said I, rubbing the corners of my eyes, and trying
to pinch myself awake. Just then I saw a crowd of the busiest of 'em
running up from the river, and making directly towards the steep bank
below where I sat. They were hurrying a great log of timber, which they
threw down close beside me, as if to rest ere they mounted. 'My
friends,'--what should ail me to talk to 'em I cannot tell,--'My
friends, but ye seem to have more work in your hands than wit in your
noddles--ye might have spared yourselves the labour, I trow.' With that
the whole rout turned upon me with a shout and a chattering that would
have dumbfounded the shrillest tongue in the whole hundred--the
mill-wheel was nothing to it. I would have escaped, but my feet were