“How am I to do all that?”
“I will help you all I can, but a great deal will depend on yourself. In the meantime you must have something to eat.”
So saying, she rose, and going to a corner behind her bed, returned with a large golden-coloured egg in her hand. This she laid on the hearth, and covered over with hot ashes. She then chatted away to Colin about his father, and the sheep, and the cow, and the housework, and showed that she knew all about him. At length she drew the ashes off the egg, and put it on the plate.
“It shines like silver now,” said Colin.
“That is a sign it is quite done,” said she, and set it before him.
Colin had never tasted anything half so nice. And he had never seen such a quantity of meat in an egg. Before he had finished it he had made a hearty meal. But, in the meantime, the old woman said—
“Shall I tell you a story while you have your dinner?”
“Oh, yes, please do,” answered Colin. “You told me such stories before!”
“Jenny,” said the old woman, “my wool is all done. Get me some more.”
And from behind the bed out came a sober-coloured, but large and beautifully-shaped hen. She walked sedately across the floor, putting down her feet daintily, like a prim matron as she was, and stopping by the door, gave a cluck, cluck.
“Oh, the door is shut, is it?” said the old woman.
“Let me open it,” said Colin.
“Do, my dear.”
“What are all those white things?” he asked, for the cottage stood in the middle of a great bed of grass with white tops.
“Those are my sheep,” said the old woman. “You will see.”
Into the grass Jenny walked, and stretching up her neck, gathered the white woolly stuff in her beak. When she had as much as she could hold, she came back and dropped it on the floor; then picked the seeds out and swallowed them, and went back for more. The old woman took the wool, and fastening it on her distaff, began to spin, giving the spindle a twirl, and then dropping it and drawing out the thread from the distaff. But as soon as the spindle began to twirl, it began to sparkle all the colours of the rainbow, that it was a delight to see. And the hands of the woman, instead of being old and wrinkled, were young and long-fingered and fair, and they drew out the wool, and the spindle spun and flashed, and the hen kept going out and in, bringing wool and swallowing the seeds, and the old woman kept telling Colin one story after another, till he thought he could sit there all his life and listen. Sometimes it seemed the spindle that was flashing them, sometimes the long fingers that were spinning them, and sometimes the hen that was gathering them off the roads of the long dry grass and bringing them in her beak and laying them down on the floor.
All at once the spindle grew slower, and gradually ceased turning; the fingers stopped drawing out the thread, the hen retreated behind the bed, and the voice of the blind woman was silent.
“I suppose it is time for me to go,” said Colin.
“Yes, it is,” answered his hostess.
“Please tell me, then, how I am to dream three days without sleeping.”
“That’s over,” said the old woman. “You’ve just finished that part. I told you I would help you all I could.”
“Have I been here three days, then?” asked Colin in astonishment.
“And nights too. And I and Jenny and the spindle are quite tired and want to sleep. Jenny has got three eggs to lay besides. Make haste, my boy.”
“Please, then, tell me what I am to do next.”
“Jenny will put you in the way. When you come where you are going, you will tell them that the old woman with the spindle desires them to lift Cumberbone Crag a yard higher, and to send a flue under Stonestarvit Moss. Jenny, show Colin the way.”
Jenny came out with a surly cluck and led him a good way across the heath by a path only a hen could have found. But she turned suddenly and walked home again.
IV
The Goblin Blacksmith
Colin could just perceive something suggestive of a track, which he followed till the sun went down. Then he saw a dim light before him, keeping his eye upon which, he came at last to a smithy where, looking in at the open door, he saw a huge humpbacked smith working a forehammer in each hand.
He grinned out of the middle of his breast when he saw Colin, and said, “Come in; come in, my youngsters will be glad of you.”
He was an awful looking creature, with a great hare lip, and a red ball for a nose. Whatever he did—speak, or laugh, or sneeze—he did not stop working one moment. As often as the sparks flew in his face he snapped at them with his eyes (which were the colour of a half-dead coal), now with this one, now with that; and the more sparks they got into them the brighter his eyes grew. The moment Colin entered, he took a huge bar of iron from the furnace and began laying on it so with his two forehammers that he disappeared in a cloud of sparks, and Colin had to shut his eyes and be glad to escape with a
