or you'd be put up in the gaol. Well, a man's wife took sick, and he
went and noticed it. They came down then with bands of men they had,
and took her away to the sick-house, and he heard nothing more till
he heard she was dead, and was to be buried in the morning. At that
time there was such fear and hurry and dread on every person, they
were burying people they had no hope of, and they with life within
them. My man was uneasy a while thinking on that, and then what did
he do, but slip down in the darkness of the night and into the
dead-house, where they were after putting his wife. There were
beyond twoscore bodies, and he went feeling from one to the other.
Then I suppose his wife heard him coming--she wasn't dead at
all--and "Is that Michael?" says she. "It is then," says he; "and,
oh, my poor woman, have you your last gasps in you still?" "I have,
Michael," says she; "and they're after setting me out here with
fifty bodies the way they'll put me down into my grave at the dawn
of day." "Oh, my poor woman," says he; "have you the strength left
in you to hold on my back?" "Oh, Micky," says she, "I have surely."
He took her up then on his back, and he carried her out by lanes and
tracks till he got to his house. Then he never let on a word about
it, and at the end of three days she began to pick up, and in a
month's time she came out and began walking about like yourself or
me. And there were many people were afeard to speak to her, for they
thought she was after coming back from the grave.'

Soon afterwards we passed into a little village, and he turned down
a lane and left me. It was not long, however, till another old man
that I could see a few paces ahead stopped and waited for me, as is
the custom of the place.

'I've been down in Kilpeddar buying a scythe-stone,' he began, when