"Don't you remember, Sam, how the wise woman to church-town had a spite against Will Jacka's Maggie, and told her her cheild was goin' to be an idiot; and how et preyed on the mind of her, and the boy has no mouth-speech in him to this day? That was only in her mind. And how, in the Book, Jacob put the peeled wands before the eyes of the sheep, and the lambs came all ring-straked and speckled? I've put the thought of this before the eye of my mind; I've thought et into bein' Manuel's cheild, even as I belong to him and him only. And 'tes to him I'm taken et." Sam turned and stumbled from the room, down to the kitchen, and dropped upon the settle. The next moment, a sudden flash of fear sent him to his feet. He tore up the stairs, knocked into the nurse as she came out of her room, and swept her along with him. Senath had her shawl folded thickly over the baby's face, and she had turned over so that her body lay upon it as she clasped it to her breast. But the baby still lived, and when they had taken it from her, she fell into a sullen silence, through which the tide of her life, too, began to creep back steadily. * * * * * Ten years later, three little boys were playing in the yard at the Upper Farm. One was a few years older than the other two, who were obviously twins, fair and round and apple-cheeked, with bright brown eyes like little animals, and slackly open mouths. The other boy was of nervous make, with black hair that fell into eyes at once more human and more forlorn. He was very dirty, but he had stuck a yellow jonquil through a hole in his jersey. They were playing at moulding little men out of the mud, and setting them about an inverted flower-pot which did duty for a house. Suddenly, one of the little boys pushed away the mud-farmer which the eldest had placed at the arched break in the rim, which was the house door, and stuck his own much more primitive effort there instead. "You'm not to put your man there, Manuel," he screamed. "That's the door like where father do stand of a Sunday. My man must stand there, because every one do say you'm a changeling and no proper son at all." Manuel scrambled to his feet and ran across the yard; his hard little boots clattered as he went. He ran into the kitchen, where his mother, stout and comfortable-looking, was baking. The dim room was filled with the good smell of hot bread and pastry. "Mother, mother," sobbed Manuel, "Sam's said et again. He says I'm not like da's son; that I'm naught but a changeling." Senath raised a flushed face from her work and kept the rolling-pin still a moment while her eldest-born spoke, but she did it mechanically. "If you'd only try not to be so odd-like and so different to the rest o' the family," she complained, "the boys would'n say it so often. There, take this hot split and lave me be."