that I held his head while he died.' And sure enough
word came after that how William had died on the day she named. And,
doing as she did about the chapter and hymn, they never had such a
prayer-meeting as that. One day she and me and my mother was standing
talking, and she was warning her about something, when she says of a
sudden, 'Here comes Miss Letty in all her finery, and it's time for me
to be off.' And with that she gave a swirl round on her feet, and
raises up in the air, and round and round she goes, and up and up, as
if it was a winding stairs she went up, only far swifter. She went up
and up, till she was no bigger than a bird up against the clouds,
singing and singing the whole time the loveliest music I ever heard in
my life from that day to this. It wasn't a hymn she was singing, but
poetry, lovely poetry, and me and my mother stands gaping up, and all
of a tremble. 'What is she at all, mother?' says I. 'Is it an angel she
is, or a faery woman, or what?' With that up come Miss Letty, that was
your grandmother, dear, but Miss Letty she was then, and no word of her
being anything else, and she wondered to see us gaping up that way,
till me and my mother told her of it. She went on gay-dressed then, and
was lovely looking. She was up the lane where none of us could see her
coming forward when the Wee Woman rose up in that queer way, saying,
'Here comes Miss Letty in all her finery.' Who knows to what far
country she went, or to see whom dying?
"It was never after dark she came, but daylight always, as far as I
mind, but wanst, and that was on a Hallow Eve night. My mother was by
the fire, making ready the supper; she had a duck down and some apples.
In slips the Wee Woman, 'I'm come to pass my Hallow Eve with you,' says
she. 'That's right,' says my mother, and thinks to herself, 'I can give
her her supper nicely.' Down she sits by the fire a while. 'Now I'll
tell you where you'll bring my supper,' says she. 'In the room beyond
there beside the loom--set a chair in and a plate.' 'When ye're
spending the night, mayn't ye as well sit by the table and eat with the
rest of us?' 'Do what you're bid, and set whatever you give me in the
room beyant. I'll eat there and nowhere else.' So my mother sets her a
plate of duck and some apples, whatever was going, in where she bid,
and we got to our supper and she to hers; and when we rose I went in,
and there, lo and behold ye, was her supper-plate a bit ate of each
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