"There was a deal o' talk lang before my aunt's time about it; and
'twas said the step-mother knew more than she was like to let out. And
she managed her husband, the ald squire, wi' her white-heft and
flatteries. And as the boy was never seen more, in course of time the
thing died out of fowks' minds.

"I'm goin' to tell ye noo about what I sid wi' my own een.

"I was not there six months, and it was winter time, when the ald lady
took her last sickness.

"The doctor was afeard she might a took a fit o' madness, as she did
fifteen years befoore, and was buckled up, many a time, in a
strait-waistcoat, which was the very leathern jerkin I sid in the
closet, off my aunt's room.

"Well, she didn't. She pined, and windered, and went off, torflin',
torflin', quiet enough, till a day or two before her flittin', and
then she took to rabblin', and sometimes skirlin' in the bed, ye'd
think a robber had a knife to her throat, and she used to work out o'
the bed, and not being strong enough, then, to walk or stand, she'd
fall on the flure, wi' her ald wizened hands stretched before her
face, and skirlin' still for mercy.

"Ye may guess I didn't go into the room, and I used to be shiverin' in
my bed wi' fear, at her skirlin' and scrafflin' on the flure, and
blarin' out words that id make your skin turn blue.

"My aunt, and Mrs. Wyvern, and Judith Squailes, and a woman from
Lexhoe, was always about her. At last she took fits, and they wore her