As the constable shouted “Whoa!” at the top of his lungs and chased wildly down the hill out of sight, Cuddy walked to the side of the bridge and threw into the water the long, sharp locust-thorn that had done such sly and good execution as a spur, as a “conjure” to the sheriff’s steed. Then he sat down by the side of his blanket bundle in the hot noonday sunlight, and he took out his fiddle and scraped and sawed to the bees and birds and butterflies like a jolly yellow Pan. And he chuckled and laughed and whistled and sang, and once he jumped up and danced through “Old Chalmouni Fair” with a brisk vigor that put to shame the unwilling and clumsy efforts of the constable, and made the tow tongs and the blue coat-tails snap and flap around his shrivelled old yellow legs. It was certainly most astonishing to see such agility and activity in a man so aged, and in one so rheumatic and so witch-ridden an hour previously. At last a passing farm-wagon picked him up and carried him and his great bundle to his own door. As Cuddymonk replanted his early potatoes the following morning, he once more soliloquized to his wife: “I tell you, Rosann, dat ole fool ob a Cranston won’t nebber ’rest me fer debt no more. I ain’t goin’ to raise no more pigs anyway, even ef I does get ’em somewhat cheap. ’Tatoes is better’n pigs. Times nebber’ll be good in dis country till ebberybody stops raisin’ pigs an’ plant ’tatoes; dat’s de true secret ob de pollitercul crisis ob dis land.” THE WITCH SHEEP In the darkness of Christmas morning, in the year 1811, old Benny Nichols could not sleep. He was not thinking of Santa Claus nor of Christmas gifts; he was watching for the first gray dawn which marked his regular rising hour, and he tossed and turned, wondering why he was so wakeful, until at last he rose in despair and lighted a candle to discover how long he had to wait ere daybreak. To his amazement he found the hands of the old clock pointing to the hour of nine, and as he stood shivering, candle in hand, staring at the apparently deceitful, bland face the clock raised its voice and struck nine, loudly and brassily, as if to prove that its hands and face told the truth. Benny then walked quickly to the window, and saw that the apparent darkness and length of the night came from a great wall of snow which covered the entire window and which had nearly all fallen since the previous sunset. Keenly awake at once when he recognized the lateness of the hour, the old man wakened his wife Debby, and bade her “hurry up and git somethin’ to eat. It’s nine o’clock, and we’ve had the wust snowstorm ye ever see, and me a-laying’ here in bed, and them new sheep a-walkin’ into the sea and gittin’ drownded!”