by name, was
working in the forest near the Roman Road, and at twelve o'clock his
little son, Trevor, brought the man his dinner of bread and cheese.
After the meal, the boy, who was about seven years old at the time, left
his father at work, and, as he said, went to look for flowers in the
wood, and the man, who could hear him shouting with delight over his
discoveries, felt no uneasiness. Suddenly, however, he was horrified at
hearing the most dreadful screams, evidently the result of great terror,
proceeding from the direction in which his son had gone, and he hastily
threw down his tools and ran to see what had happened. Tracing his path
by the sound, he met the little boy, who was running headlong, and was
evidently terribly frightened, and on questioning him the man at last
elicited that after picking a posy of flowers he felt tired, and lay
down on the grass and fell asleep. He was suddenly awakened, as he
stated, by a peculiar noise, a sort of singing he called it, and on
peeping through the branches he saw Helen V. playing on the grass with a
'strange naked man,' whom he seemed unable to describe more fully. He
said he felt dreadfully frightened, and ran away crying for his father.
Joseph W. proceeded in the direction indicated by his son, and found
Helen V. sitting on the grass in the middle of a glade or open space
left by charcoal burners. He angrily charged her with frightening his
little boy, but she entirely denied the accusation and laughed at the
child's story of a 'strange man,' to which he himself did not attach
much credence. Joseph W. came to the conclusion that the boy had woke up
with a sudden fright, as children sometimes do, but Trevor persisted in
his story, and continued in such evident distress that at last his
father took him home, hoping that his mother would be able to soothe
him. For many weeks, however, the boy gave his parents much anxiety; he
became nervous and strange in his manner, refusing to leave the cottage
by himself, and constantly alarming the household by waking in the night
with cries of 'The man in the wood! father! father!'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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