preparing to resign herself to her fate. "I hope you'll ask him, sir,
when he comes to, whether it were not that thing in the pound as
frightened him. I took it for some'at else, more's the grief! but it
looks, for all the world, like a ghost in the moonlight."

"What is in the pound?" demanded Jan.

"It's a white cow," responded Susan Peckaby. "And it strikes me as it's
Farmer Blow's. He have got a white cow, you know, sir, like he have got
a white pony, and they be always a-giving me a turn, one or t'other of
'em. I'd like old Blow to be indicted for a pest, I would! a-keeping
white animals to upset folks. It's not a week ago that I met that cow in
the road at dusk--strayed through a gap in the hedge. Tiresome beast,
a-causing my heart to leap into my mouth!"

"If Dan have put himself into this state, and done all this damage,
through nothing but seeing of a white cow, won't I baste him!"
emphatically rejoined Mrs. Duff.

Jan at length succeeded in getting the kitchen clear. But for some time,
in spite of all his skill and attention--and he spared neither--he could
make no impression upon the unhappy Dan. His mother's bed was made ready
for him--Dan himself sharing the accommodation of a dark closet in an
ordinary way, in common with his brothers--and Jan carried him up to it.
There he somewhat revived, sufficiently to answer a question or two
rationally. It must be confessed that Jan felt some curiosity upon the
subject; to suppose the boy had been thrown into that state, simply by
seeing a white cow in the pound, was ridiculous.

"What frightened you?" asked Jan.

"I see'd a dead man," answered the boy. "Oh, lor!"

"Well?" said Jan, with composure, "he didn't eat you. What is there in a
dead man to be alarmed at? I have seen scores--handled 'em too. What
dead man was it?"

The boy pulled the bed-clothes over him, and moaned. Jan pulled them
down again.

"Of course you can't tell! There's no dead man in Deerham. Was it in the
churchyard?"

"No."

"Was it in the pound?" asked Jan triumphantly, thinking he had got it
right this time.

"No."

The answer was an unexpected one.

"Where was it, then?"

"Oh-o-o-o-oh!" moaned the boy, beginning to shake and twitch again.

"Now, Dan Duff, this won't do," said Jan. "Tell me quietly what you saw,
and where you saw it."

"I see'd a dead man," reiterated Dan Duff. And it appeared to be all he
was capable of saying.

"You saw a white cow on its hind legs,