Page:Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Volume 1.djvu/228

Rh in the afternoon, and heard a pretty little story of practical Christianity.

Marie lay asleep on her mother's bed in the wall, and her father, sitting by her, told the tale in a low voice, pausing now and then to look at her, as if his little daughter had done something to be proud of.

It seems that in the village there was an old woman frightfully disfigured by fire, and not quite sane as the people thought. She was harmless, but never showed herself by day; and only came out at night to work in her garden or take the air. Many of the ignorant peasants feared her, however; for the country abounds in fairy legends, arid strange tales of ghosts and goblins. But the more charitable left bread at her door, and took in return the hose she knit or the thread she spun.

During the drought it was observed that her