Chapter 1
n the days when the spinning-wheels hummed busily in the
farmhouses—and even great ladies, clothed in silk and
thread-lace, had their toy spinning-wheels of polished oak—
there might be seen in districts far away among the lanes, or deep
in the bosom of the hills, certain pallid, undersized men, who, by
the side of the brawny country-folk, looked like the remnants of a
disinherited race. The shepherd’s dog barked fiercely when one of
these alien-looking men appeared on the upland, dark against the
early winter sunset; for what dog likes a figure bent under a heavy
bag?—and these pale men rarely stirred abroad without that
mysterious burden. The shepherd himself, though he had good
reason to believe that the bag held nothing but flaxen thread, or
else the long rolls of strong linen spun from that thread, was not
quite sure that this trade of weaving, indispensable though it was,
could be carried on entirely without the help of the Evil One. In
that far-off time superstition clung easily round every person or
thing that was at all unwonted, or even intermittent and
occasional merely, like the visits of the pedlar or the knife-grinder.
No one knew where wandering men had their homes or their
origin; and how was a man to be explained unless you at least
knew somebody who knew his father and mother?