when she whispered of the white figure which stood at the cross roads
after midnight, he testified to having seen it himself--tall beyond
mortal height, and pointing four ways at once. He had a legend of his
own too, which Thomasina sometimes gave him the chance of telling, of
how he was followed home one moonlight night by a black Something as big
as a young calf, which "wimmled and wammled," around him till he fell
senseless into the ditch, and being found there by the farm-bailiff on
his return from market was unjustly accused of the vice of intoxication.

"Fault-finders should be free of flaws," Thomasina would say with a prim
chin. She _had_ seen the farm-bailiff himself "the worse" for more than
his supper beer.

But there was one history which Thomasina was always loth to relate, and
it was that which both John Broom and the cowherd especially
preferred--the history of the Lob Lie-by-the-fire.

Thomasina had a feeling (which was shared by Annie the lass) that it was
better not to talk of "anything" peculiar to the house in which you were
living. One's neighbours' ghosts and bogles are another matter.

But to John Broom and the cowherd no subject was so interesting as that
of the Lubber-fiend. The cowherd sighed to think of the good old times
when a man might sleep on in spite of cocks, and the stables be cleaner,
and the beasts better tended than if he had been up with the lark. And
John Broom's curiosity was never quenched about the rough, hairy
Good-fellow who worked at night that others might be idle by day, and
who was sometimes caught at his hard earned nap, lying "like a great
hurgin bear," where the boy loved to lie himself, before the fire, on
this very hearth.