Then after a little while Timothy added reflectively, "There be mountains in a tongue. Grandam used to say as Parson Mortimer seemed to hold God Almighty inside him when he war angry, so terrible war he, not that he ever war angry unless he waxed white hot about sin, or cruelty, as he called it. He war a little 'un to look at, but he had a mighty spirit, though lamb-like to pups, childers, and wild wounded things. The biggest fellows quailed before him when he took on in a rampage, and none of them dared sin when he war by." At that moment I heard my Bess tapping at the door. "Lor, bless her," said Timothy, "'tis the little 'un; how them does grow, the childers," and he got up and hobbled to the door. Then Bess ran in and bubbled over with excitement about her May _fête_, for she had met Constance on the road. She told old Master Theobalds that he must come down and see her May dance. "Sure I will, my pretty," he said; "I'd like to see a May-stang again, and a mass of lads and lasses dancing round, as I have heard grandam talk about when she war a likely wench." Then the old man began to tell us of the old May Days, and of the long-handed-down traditions of the Shropshire May festival. "It war the fashion," he said, "in the old time for all the lads and lasses to wend their way to the Stanhill Coppice or down to the great Edge Wood, and a merry time they had. Old Gregson Child as war shepherd to Farmer Dawson, that lived once at the Marsh Farm, used to go with the lads, and they used to blow horns, and one or two, if they had a mind, would tootle on the flute, and others scrape on fiddles, till wood and field fair swarmed with music, and so, they say, they got them to the woods an hour or so after dawn. And after a while, the lads and lasses would twine garlands, and the lads would buss the lasses. And the lasses would cry out, but let 'em do it again, and when they had romped and sang, the boys and maids, fair smothered in May branches, mead marigolds, posies of primroses, and laxter shoots of beech and hazel, would get them to their homes and hang up garlands and posies to their lintels over their dad's door, and take to laughter and bussing again. "Ay, grandam used to talk of those times--merry times for all they hung for sheep stealing, sure enough, but the lads laughed 'twixt times gay as ecalls," and the old man bent before the dying fire, and seemed in thought to plunge back to the days of the past, which even he could hardly have seen. Then Bess and I got up, and Mouse gave a deep bark, and as I said good-bye, I repeated my invitation for the First of May. "Lor', mam," replied old Timothy, sadly, as he opened the door, "it isn't likely as I shall forget it, for a piece of jollity don't often come my way. 'Tis dull and parson-like as they've made the world now. Well, it is for the young 'uns to call for the tune now."