hem of
how he was lost in the bogs, and how, when he was nigh dead with
fright, the light shone out, and he found the path and got home safe.

So off they all went to the Wise Woman, and told her about it, and she
looked long in the pot and the Book again, and then she nodded her
head.

"It's dark still, childer, dark!" says she, "and I can't rightly see,
but do as I tell ye, and ye'll find out for yourselves. Go, all of ye,
just afore the night gathers, put a stone in your mouth, and take a
hazel-twig in your hands, and say never a word till you're safe home
again. Then walk on and fear not, far into the midst of the marsh,
till ye find a coffin, a candle, and a cross. Then ye'll not be far
from your Moon; look, and m'appen ye'll find her."

So come the next night in the darklings, out they went all together,
every man with a stone in his mouth, and a hazel-twig in his hand, and
feeling, thou may'st reckon, main feared and creepy. And they stumbled
and stottered along the paths into the midst of the bogs; they saw
naught, though they heard sighings and flutterings in their ears, and
felt cold wet fingers touching them; but all together, looking around
for the coffin, the candle, and the cross, while they came nigh to the
pool beside the great snag, where the Moon lay buried. And all at once
they stopped, quaking and mazed and skeery, for there was the great
stone, half in, half out of the water, for all the world like a
strange big coffin; and at the head was the black snag, stretching out
its two arms in a dark gruesome cross, and on it a tiddy light
flickered, like a dying candle. And they all knelt down in the mud,
and said, "Our Lord," first forward, because of the cross, and then
backward, to keep off the Bogles; but without speaking out, for they
knew that the Evil Things would catch them, if they didn't do as the
Wise Woman told them.

Then they went nigher, and took hold of the big stone, and shoved it
up, and afterward they said that for one tiddy minute they saw a
strange and beautiful face looking up at them glad-like out of the
black water; but the Light came so quick and so white and shining,
that they stepped back mazed with it, and the very next minute, when
they could see again, there was the full Moon in the sky, bright and
beautiful and kind as ever, shining and smiling down at them, and
making the bogs and the paths as clear as day, and stealing into the
very corners, as though she'd have driven