On May eve, in the afternoon, I had occasion to leave home for a short time, and on my return was rather surprised to find all the windows closed and the door locked against me. I knocked and called for admittance, but received no answer; and hearing the noise of churning going on within, “fast and furious,” the truth flashed across my mind; and lamenting my wife’s credulity, I retired to the garden to await the result. In a short time she came running out like one demented, clapping her hands and screaming, “Oh! we’ve got the butter, we’ve got the butter!” and on going in I found a coulter phizzing and sparkling at a white heat in the fire, an ass’s shoe (which had been found a few days previously) under the churn, my worthy neighbour aforesaid standing over it, panting and blowing from the exertions she had made on my behoof, and wiping the dew-drops from her really comely countenance, and in the churn, floating like lumps of gold in a sea of silver, as fine a churning of butter as ever we were blessed with. Well, I own I was staggered, and being triumphantly asked, “Now, is there no witchcraft or virtue in a red-hot coulter?” I could scarcely muster up courage to utter “No.” In vain I protested the butter came back because “Brownie” got back to her pasture, in consequence of the change in her feeding, from dry fodder to the mellow and genial produce of spring, as the loss at first was owing to the transition from grass to hay. ’Twas to no purpose to argue thus: all else were positive it was otherwise; but whether the virtue was in Orohoo’s incantations, the efficacy of the red-hot coulter, the influence of the ass’s shoe, or the tremendous pommelling the milk was subjected to on the occasion, no one could exactly say.