_Shift your feet, in nimble flight,_
_You’ll be home by candlelight._
_Open the gates as wide as the sky,_
_And let the king come riding by._
After a while the singing died away, and I wondered what mischief was
brewing. But I’d enough to do, for I was determined to beat Felena, and
as Missis Sexton was her partner and Missis Miller was mine, I knew I
should have my work cut out.
The fire, mended with pine wood, gave a good, sweet smell and a warm
light, enough to play by. It lit up the walls, and the sticky
gingerbread men on the blue dish, and Jancis, as fair to see as if she’d
been made out of solid gold in old time, for an altar. In the quietness,
with _Barley Bridge_ in my mind, a sort of waking dream came to me.
I saw a great crowd of people beside the troubled water of Sarn. They
were dressed in holiday colours, but their faces were evil. Then one
came riding through them on a tall horse, and his face was the face of
the weaver. A woman stood forth from the crowd. She had a necklace of
green glass beads and green blazing eyes. She cried out—
“My body, my body, for a ride on your saddle!”
But he turned aside from her to one who stood hidden, in a torn,
sad-coloured dress, with a hare-shotten lip.