room for a third, set like a wedge in the
throat of the vale. Here the road branches into two, with a
sign-post at the angle; and between the sign-post and the grey scarp
of the hill there lies an acre of waste ground that the streams have
turned into a marsh. This is Loose-heels. Long before I learnt the
name's meaning, in the days when I trod the lower road with slate and
satchel, this spot was a favourite of mine--but chiefly in July, when
the monkey-flower was out, and the marsh aflame with it.

There was a spell in that yellow blossom with the wicked blood-red
spots, that held me its mere slave. Also the finest grew in
desperate places. So that, day after day, when July came round, my
mother would cry shame on my small-clothes, and my father take
exercise upon them; and all the month I went tingling. They were
pledged to "break me of it"; but they never did. Now they are dead,
and the flowers--the flowers last always, as Victor Hugo says.
When, after many years, I revisited the valley, the stream had
carried the seeds half a mile below Loose-heels, and painted its
banks with monkey-blossoms all the way. But the finest, I was glad
to see, still inhabited the marsh.

Now, it is rare to find this plant growing wild; for, in fact, it is
a garden flower. And its history here is connected with a bit of mud
wall, ruined and covered with mosses and ragwort, that still pushed
up from the swampy ground when I knew it, and had once been part of a
cottage. How a cottage came here, and how its inhabitants entered
and went out, are questions past guessing; for the marsh hemmed it in
on three sides, and the fourth is a slope of hill fit to break your
neck. But there was the wall, and here is the story.

One morning, near the close of the last century, a small child came
running down to the village with news that the cottage, which for ten
years had stood empty, was let; there was smoke coming out at the
chimney, and an outlandish lady walking in the garden. Being
catechised, he added that the lady wore bassomy bows in her cap, and
had accosted him in a heathen tongue that caused him to flee, fearing
worse things. This being told, two women, rulers of their homes,
sent their husbands up the valley to spy, who found the boy had
spoken truth.

Smoke was curling from the chimney, and in the garden the lady was
still moving about--a small yellow creature, with a wrinkled but
pleasant face, white curls, and piercing