wasn't Jerry's clog-print on the ashes, it was Amos's; and the Lord had
taen away my eldest barn frae me because I'd etten o' the Tree o'
Knowledge."


II. Janet's Cove


Grannie's reputation as a story-teller was readily acknowledged by the
children of our village. When they had trudged back from school which
was held in a village two miles away, tea was always ready for them. But
tea in their own kitchens was accounted a dull repast. If the weather
was fine they carried their "shives" of bread and dripping, or bread and
treacle, into the road in front of their houses and ate them in the
intervals between "Here come three dukes a-riding," "Wallflowers,
wallflowers, growing up so high," and "Poor Roger is dead and laid in
his grave." But in winter, or when the weather was bad, they made it
their custom to take their teas to Grannie's fireside and demand a story
as accompaniment to their frugal meal. The young voices of the children
brightened Grannie's life, and the hour of story-telling round the fire
was for her like a golden sunset following upon a day of gloom.

The stories which she told to the children were usually concerned with
her own childhood. She had always been of an imaginative turn of mind
and the doings of her early life, seen through the long-drawn vistas of
the years, had become suffused with iridescent colours. They had
gathered to themselves romance as a wall overhung by trees gathers to
itself moss and fern and lichen.

"Tell you a tale," she would say. "Ay, but, honey-barns, I reckon you'll