But the time of these mysteries has quite passed by. Back to the opal and ivory dream-palaces of fairy-land, back to the shores of old romance, have Dartmoor’s legendary spirits vanished; they are as dead as the folk whose ruined homes still glimmer grey on twilight heaths at sunset and at dawn. Knowledge has stricken our traditions hip and thigh; our lore is obsolete; and our Moor children of to-day, as they pass through the stages of learning’s dawn, see only an unlikeness to truth that stamps the faces of these far-off things. Yet who shall say that knowledge and wisdom are one? Who shall deny that not seldom the story loved in life’s dawn-light and rejected at noon, is welcomed again and only understood when evening shadows fall? Mrs. Stanbury was saturated with the ancient myths, and they brought her more sorrow than joy. "I could wish that dear mother didn’t believe so many things," admitted Margaret. "But there it is--father haven’t changed her in all these years, so it isn’t likely that ever he will. She was full of Crazywell Pool only yesterday. You know it--a wisht place, sure enough, and it tells about nothing but death and such-like dismal matters. But if you was to say to her ’twas all nonsense--not that I would go so far as that myself--she’d answer that you was courting your undoing and would surely come to harm." "I know she would and you yourself are as bad, pretty near." "Crazywell is harmless enough every night but Christmas Eve," explained Margaret. "Only then can you say that there’s aught out of the common hidden in the water. But then--well, you know what they say." "Stuff and nonsense! Your mother believes that you hear a voice there after dark on Christmas Eve; and that it calls out the names of them that’ll die afore another year’s out. What can be sillier than that?" "Strange things have happened, all the same," argued Margaret. "I don’t say I trust in all that dear mother does, though she can give chapter and verse for most of it; but Crazywell have spoken out the death year of more men than one. Why, only ten year agone you know how Joseph Westaway, being over-got by the fog, was along there on Christmas Eve and heard an awful voice saying, ’Nathan Snell! Nathan Snell!’ And didn’t Nathan Snell--Mr. Simon Snell’s own father--actually die the March afterwards, of a kick from his horse? You can’t deny that, Bartley, because Joseph Westaway heard it with his own ears--him being on the way to eat his Christmas dinner at Kingsett Farm, with the Pierces, and not so much as market merry."