Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III TELLING HOW THE FARMER BROUGHT HOME THE PRIEST "You must know," said the farmer, laying his hand on the head of the child, "that when this little chap here was born, my good wife was very near leaving this world for a better one. All the others had come easy, and in the way of nature, and but for the lying up, and things at sixes and sevens in the house and about it, from the want of the mistress's eye, 'twas nothing but a warm welcome for another little one, and no trouble of it at all. "Well, the wise woman was here in due time, who knows the road by which a child comes into the world as well as any, and an easy road it was to this house, as she told us. She was a merry soul and knew how to keep up a woman in what it is given to women to go through, both with cheering words and clever comforting ways. Food and drink she loved at the proper times, and stint of them was what she couldn't bear, though in houses where she knew living was hard she would share with the rest and no words about it. Everywhere she did her best—a good woman, and knew more about birth and death than most. "There was no lack of the good cheer she loved in this house, and whether it was that she took too much pleasure in it, which I don't say, for it was not her habit when duty was to be done, or whether she was a trifle careless over what had always gone so well that you might saythere was little for her to do, or whether it just came so from none of her fault, I don't know, but about half past ten at night as I was sitting in front of this very fire, in that chair you see there, in she bounced with a white face and called out, 'You must go and fetch the doctor at once.' "I was up out of the chair as quick as ever you saw. I won't say but what my eyes had been shut, for by nin...