Such was Timothy Barraclough's story of Throp's wife and of the terrible fate which befell her and her husband. I spent the night at the inn, and next morning made further inquiries into the matter. There was little more to be learnt, but I was told that farmers crossing the moors on their way home from Colne market had sometimes heard, among the rocks on the crest of the hills, the sound of a spinning-wheel; but others had laughed at this, and had said that what they had heard was only the cry of the nightjar among the bracken. It was also rumoured that on one occasion some boys from the village had made their way into a natural cavern which ran beneath the rocks, and, after creeping some distance on hands and knees, had been startled by ghostly sounds. What they heard was the mournful whistling of a popular air, as it were by some caged bird, and then the strain was taken up by the voices of a man and woman singing in unison: Up and down the city street In and out the "Easel," That's the way the money goes, Pop goes the weazel. "IT MUN BE SO" I met her on her way through the path-fields to the cowshed; she was gathering, in the fading light of an October evening, the belated stars of the grass of Parnassus, and strapped to her shoulders was the "budget," shaped to the contour of the back, and into which the milk was poured from the pails. It was a heavy load for a girl of twelve, but she was used to it, and did not grumble. Her father was dead, all the day-tale men had been called up, and her mother, she assured me, "was that thrang wi' t' hens an' t' cauves, shoo'd no time for milkin' cows." In the village she was subjected to a good deal of ridicule. The children made fun of her on her way home from school, and called her "daft Lizzie"; the old folks, when they heard her muttering to herself, would shrug their shoulders and pass the remark that she was "nobbut a hauf-rocked 'un"--an insult peculiarly galling to her mother. "A hauf-rocked 'un!" she would exclaim. "Nay, I rocked her misel i' t' creddle while my shackles fair worked. Shoo taks after her dad, that's what's wrang wi' Lizzie. A feckless gowk was Watmough; he couldn't frame to do owt but play t' fiddle i' t' sky-parlour, or sit ower t' fire eatin' fat-shives." Lizzie's daftness was not a serious matter; it consisted partly in a certain dreaminess, which brought a yonderly look into her eyes, and made her inattentive to what was going on around her, and partly in that habit of talking to herself which has already been referred to. I had won her confidence and friendship from the time when I rescued her "pricky-back urchin" from being kicked to death by the farm boys, who declared that hedgehogs always made their way into the byres and milked the cows. Since then we had had many talks together, but this was the first time that I had accompanied her when she went to milk.