easts were all reight i' t' mistals, an' then they went
up on to t' moors to look for t' sheep. When they got nigh Throp's farm,
they noticed there was a gert hoil in his riggin' big enough for a man
to get through. So they shouted to Throp, but he niver answered. Then
they oppened t' door an' looked in. There was nobody i' t' kitchen, but
t' spinnin'-wheel were all meshed to bits and there were a smell o'
burnin' wool. They went all ower t' house, but they could see nowt o'
Throp nor o' Throp's wife, nor o' Throp's wife's chintz-cat that shoo
called Nimrod, nor yet o' Throp's parrot that he'd taught to whistle
_Pop goes t' Weazel_. They lated 'em ower t' moors an' along t' beck
boddom, but 'twere all for nowt, an' nobody i' Cohen-eead iver set een
on 'em again."

Such was Timothy Barraclough's story of Throp's wife and of the terrible
fate which befell her and her husband. I spent the night at the inn, and
next morning made further inquiries into the matter. There was little
more to be learnt, but I was told that farmers crossing the moors on
their way home from Colne market had sometimes heard, among the rocks on
the crest of the hills, the sound of a spinning-wheel; but others had
laughed at this, and had said that what they had heard was only the cry
of the nightjar among the bracken. It was also rumoured that on one
occasion some boys from the village had made their way into a natural
cavern which ran beneath the rocks, and, after creeping some distance on
hands and knees, had been startled by ghostly sounds. What they heard
was the mournful whistling of a popular air, as it were by some caged
bird, and then the strain was taken up by the voices of a man and woman
singing in unison:

Up and down the city street
In and out the "Easel,"
That's the way the money goes,
Pop goes the weazel.

"IT MUN BE SO"

I met her on her way through the path-fields to the cowshed; she was
gathering, in the fading light of an October evening, the belated stars
of the grass of Parnassus, and strapped to her shoulders was the
"budget," shaped to the contour of the back, and into which the milk was
poured from the pails. It was a heavy load for a girl of twelve, but she
was used to it, and did not grumble. Her father was dead, all the
day-tale men had been called up, and her mother, she assured me, "was
that thrang wi' t' hens an' t' cauves, shoo'd no time for milkin' cows."

In the village she was subjec