Bessie Jane never saw any more of the Little People, and never went shrimping again with the shrimping-net made by a Wise Woman out of Piskey-wool spun by the Small People, for the simple reason she lost the net the day after she saw the dear Wee Folk and the sea-fairies with her borrowed eyes. How she lost it, or where, she did not know, and the Wise Woman, wise as she was, could not tell her. But she was ever afterwards grateful for having seen them, especially the sea-fairies, and she showed her gratitude by being kinder than ever to her poor, lonely old friend.
When our great-great-grandmothers were young, a small lad called William John Pendarvey went on a visit to his Great-Aunt Ann, a very silent, austere old maid, who lived by herself in the Vale beautiful of Lanherne.
Great-Aunt Ann being old and very quiet, was the last person in the world that a tender-hearted, sensitive little chap as William John was should have gone to stay with.
The house where she lived was rather small and very gloomy, and had nothing nice about it, but it possessed a large and beautiful orchard, protected from the rough and cutting winds by the escarpment of the downs that rose above it and the valley.
But delightful as this orchard was, nobody except Great-Aunt Ann--and she not often--ever went into it, because it was known to be haunted by something, in the shape of a little White Hare which had been seen there from time unknown, wandering like a shadow over the grass, and in and out amongst the trees, or sitting motionless at the foot of a blasted apple-tree.
Who or what this apparition was nobody could tell, but not a man, woman or child in the Vale, except Great-Aunt Ann, would have gone into that orchard for all they were worth.
Little William John might never have known there was an orchard belonging to the gloomy old house if he had not wandered into a bedroom at the back of the house overlooking the entrance to the orchard and peeped out of the window.
He asked to be allowed to go and play there, as it looked so bright and sunny in its open spaces, but Great-Aunt Ann said: 'Not to-day.'
It was always 'Not to-day' whenever he asked to go into that orchard, and probably he would never have gone into it at all if the old maid had not occasion one day to go to St. Columb, a small market town three miles from where she lived.