han
the chance to steal away an unchristened child to join their nation
of mischief.

Lovey listened to them, and it preyed on her mind. She reckoned that
her best course was to fetch a holy man as quickly as possible to
baptise the child and make the cross over him. So one afternoon, the
mite being then a bare fortnight old, she left him asleep in his
cradle and, wrapping a shawl over her head, hurried off to seek
Meriden the Priest.

Meriden the Priest dwelt in a hut among the sandhills, a bowshot
beyond St. Gwithian's Chapel on the seaward side, as you go out to
Godrevy. He had spent the day in barking his nets, and was spreading
them out to dry on the short turf of the towans; but on hearing
Lovey's errand, he good-naturedly dropped his occupation and, staying
only to fill a bottle with holy water, walked back with her to her
home.

As they drew near, Lovey was somewhat perturbed to see that the door,
which she had carefully closed, was standing wide open. She guessed,
however, that a neighbour had called in her absence, and would be
inside keeping watch over the child. As she reached the threshold,
the dreadful truth broke upon her: the kitchen was empty, and so was
the cradle!

It made her frantic for a while. Meriden the Priest offered what
consolation he could, and suggested that one of her neighbours had
called indeed, and finding the baby alone in the cottage, had taken
it off to her own home to guard it. But this he felt to be a forlorn
hope, and it proved a vain one. Neither search nor inquiry could
trace the infant. Beyond a doubt the Piskies had carried him off.

When this was established so that even the hopefullest of the
good-wives shook her head over it, Lovey grew calm of a sudden and
(as it seemed) with the calm of despair. She grew obstinate too.

"My blessed cheeld!" she kept repeating. "The tender worm of 'en!
But I'll have 'en back, if I've to go to the naughty place to fetch
'en. Why, what sort of a tale be I to pitch to my Dan'l, if he comes
home and his firstborn gone?"

They shook their heads again over this. It would be a brave blow for
the man, but (said one to another) he that marries a fool must look
for thorns in his bed.

"What's done can't be undone," they told her. "You'd best let a
two-three of us stay the night and coax 'ee from frettin'. It's bad
for the system, and you so soon over child-birth."

Lovey opened her eyes wide on them.

"Lord's sake!" she