And this was no fanciful reserve and
avoidance. Mick Daly, when he had the orchard, used to sleep in the loft
over the kitchen; and he swore that within five or six weeks, while he
lodged there, he twice saw the same thing, and that was a lady in a hood
and a loose dress, her head drooping, and her finger on her lip, walking
in silence among the crooked stems, with a little child by the hand, who
ran smiling and skipping beside her. And the Widow Cresswell once met
them at night-fall, on the path through the orchard to the back-door,
and she did not know what it was until she saw the men looking at one
another as she told it.
'It's often she told it to me,' said old Sally; 'and how she came on
them all of a sudden at the turn of the path, just by the thick clump of
alder trees; and how she stopped, thinking it was some lady that had a
right to be there; and how they went by as swift as the shadow of a
cloud, though she only seemed to be walking slow enough, and the little
child pulling by her arm, this way and that way, and took no notice of
her, nor even raised her head, though she stopped and courtesied.
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