It was early summer. The broom was shining in the hedges with uncommon
wealth of golden blossoms. "The lanes looked for all the world as they
did the year that poor child was found," said Thomasina, wiping her
eyes. Annie the lass sobbed hysterically, and the cowherd found himself
so low in spirits that after gazing dismally at the cowstalls, which had
not been cleaned for days past, he betook himself to the ale-house to
refresh his energies for this and other arrears of work.
On returning to the farm, however, he found his hands still feeble, and
he took a drop or two more to steady them, after which it occurred to
him that certain new potatoes which he had had orders to dig were yet in
the ground. The wood was not chopped for the next day's use, and he
wondered what had become of a fork he had had in the morning and had
laid down somewhere.
So he seated himself on some straw in the corner to think about it all,
and whilst he was thinking he fell fast asleep.
By his own account many remarkable things had befallen him in the course
of his life, including that meeting with a Black Something to which
allusion has been made, but nothing so strange as what happened to him
that night.
When he awoke in the morning and sat up on the straw, and looked around
him, the stable was freshly cleaned, the litter in the stalls was shaken
and turned, and near the door was an old barrel of newly dug potatoes,
and the fork stood by it.
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