But when I did not
feel you get up, and the cold hand grew to be more than I could bear,
I hit out to push your hand away, and felt your place empty--but warm.
Then I remembered the follet, and ran upstairs as hard as I could put
my feet to the ground: never was I in such a fright!'
"The sick lad died on the following night."
Here Carden the elder stopped, and Jerome, his son, philosophised on
the subject.
Miss Dendy, on the authority of Mr. Elijah Cope, an itinerant
preacher, gives this anecdote of similar familiarity with a follet in
Staffordshire.
* * * * *
"Fairies! I went into a farmhouse to stay a night, and in the evening
there came a knocking in the room as if some one had struck the table.
I jumped up. My hostess got up and 'Good-night,' says she, 'I'm off'.
'But what was it?' says I. 'Just a poor old fairy,' says she; 'Old
Nancy. She's a poor old thing; been here ever so long; lost her
husband and her children; it's bad to be left like that, all alone. I
leave a bit o' cake on the table for her, and sometimes she fetches
it, and sometimes she don't."
THE BLACK DOG AND THE THUMBLESS HAND
[Some years ago I published in a volume of tales called The Wrong
Paradise, a paper styled "My Friend the Beach-comber".
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