,
where they could see naught.

'Now there was a poor widow at Dymchurch under the Wall, which, lacking
man or property, she had the more time for feeling; and she come to feel
there was a Trouble outside her doorstep bigger an' heavier than aught
she'd ever carried over it. She had two sons--one born blind, and t'other
struck dumb through fallin' off the Wall when he was liddle. They was men
grown, but not wage-earnin', an' she worked for 'em, keepin' bees and
answerin' Questions.'

'What sort of questions?' said Dan.

'Like where lost things might be found, an' what to put about a crooked
baby's neck, an' how to join parted sweethearts. She felt the Trouble on
the Marsh same as eels feel thunder. She was a wise woman.'

'My woman was won'erful weather-tender, too,' said Hobden. 'I've seen her
brish sparks like off an anvil out of her hair in thunderstorms. But she
never laid out to answer Questions.'

'This woman was a Seeker like, an' Seekers they sometimes find. One night,
while she lay abed, hot an' aching, there come a Dream an' tapped at her
window, and "Widow Whitgift," it said, "Widow Whitgift!"

'First, by the wings an' the whistling, she thought it was peewits, but
last she arose an' dressed herself, an' opened her door to the Marsh, an'
she felt the Trouble an' the Groaning all about her, strong as fever an'
ague, an' she calls: "What is it? Oh, what is it?"

'Then 'twas all like the frogs in the diks peeping: then 'twas all like
the reeds in the diks clipclapping; an' then the great Tide-wave rummelled
along the Wall, an' she couldn't hear proper.

'Three times she called, an' three times the Tide-wave did her down. But
she catched the quiet between, an' she cries out, "What is the Trouble on
the Marsh that's been lying down with my heart an' arising with my body
this month gone?" She felt a liddle hand lay hold on her gown-hem, an' she
stooped to the pull o' that liddle hand.'

Tom Shoesmith spread his huge fist before the fire and smiled at it.

'"Will the sea drown the Marsh?" she says. She was a Marsh-woman first an'
foremost.

'"No," says the liddle voice. "Sleep sound for all o' that."

'"Is the Plague comin' to the Marsh?" she says. Them was all the ills she
knowed.

'"No. Sleep sound for all o' that," says Robin.

'She turned about, half mindful to go in, but the liddle voices grieved
that shrill an' sorrowful she turns back, an' she cries: "If it is not a
Trouble of Flesh an' Blood