All was quiet within doors, save the digging and the gnawing I have mentioned, but in the woods that partly encircled the place, and darkened close against the western gables, the winds went blindly moaning up and down, and the dead boughs creaked against each other, filling the time with music when the ill-boding owls muffled themselves away. It was very still in the house, I said, for though Margery was busy, her work made no noise, till laying aside the great fleece of wool from her knees, which her skinny fingers had been picking apart, she spoke aloud, and on this wise— “I will stir with my staff the embers from which the glow is well-nigh perished, that my child may feel in her sleep its comfortable influence, for evil dreams may come of unrest, and evil dreams make evil thoughts, and when they have once taken possession of the heart, how hardly are they charmed away.” So, having taken the fleece from her knees and laid it over a wooden stool at her feet, she arose, and fumbling in the chimney-corner opposite to that where the child slept, produced a great knotty staff, the lower end of which was blackened and charred. With this she stirred the gray ashes from the fiery log that lay beneath, and beating and breaking it into coals, gathered the dry cinders together that were scattered about, and having spread them over the freshly-broken coals, a blaze sprung up, slight and blue at first, but reddening and deepening till the rafters over-head, and the oak slabs below, the walnut bedstead in the corner, with its antique carving, and elaborately wrought tester, and the huge chest with its iron padlock, the wrinkled visage of the old woman, and the pale hair and plump, naked feet of the child, were all distinctly visible. “Charity, my pretty darling,” called the old woman, as she resumed her seat and the fleece of wool, “Wake, and betake thee to thy wheel for an hour, and I will tell thee of the plan I have made to keep our house full of cheer and music all the while, even when thou weariest of the wheel, and thy tongue prattlest not.” The child rubbed her eyes, lifted her head from the stone jam, saying in a voice sweet and plaintive, as we sometimes hear a bird’s— “I have spun my task, grandam—six wisps of flax into as many hanks of thread, and thou seest my distaff is naked—but I will wind it with another wisp and spin, at least till thy task is done.” Her naked feet pattered across the slab floor, and climbing on a ladder, she took from a peg in the rafter a fresh wisp, and as she wound the distaff peered through the south window at the half-moon, or rather at the yellowish color in the clouds behind which the half-moon was concealed. “It wears near the midnight, good grandam,” she said, shoving her wheel aside: “I will pick on the fleece, and so thy voice will not be drowned as thou tellest the plan thou hast mused of.”