r shrew-struck, a pig bewitched, a young damsel crost in
love, Lucy was called in, and Lucy found a remedy, especially for the
latter complaint. Now and then she found herself on ticklish ground, for
the kind-heartedness which compelled her to help all distressed damsels
out of a scrape, sometimes compelled her also to help them into one;
whereon enraged fathers called Lucy ugly names, and threatened to send
her into Exeter gaol for a witch, and she smiled quietly, and hinted
that if she were "like some that were ready to return evil for evil,
such talk as that would bring no blessing on them that spoke it;" which
being translated into plain English, meant, "If you trouble me, I will
overlook (i. e. fascinate) you, and then your pigs will die, your horses
stray, your cream turn sour, your barns be fired, your son have St.
Vitus's dance, your daughter fits, and so on, woe on woe, till you are
very probably starved to death in a ditch, by virtue of this terrible
little eye of mine, at which, in spite of all your swearing and
bullying, you know you are now shaking in your shoes for fear. So you
had much better hold your tongue, give me a drink of cider, and leave
ill alone, lest you make it worse."

Not that Lucy ever proceeded to any such fearful extremities. On the
contrary, her boast, and her belief too, was, that she was sent into
the world to make poor souls as happy as she could, by lawful means,
of course, if possible, but if not--why, unlawful ones were better than
none; for she "couldn't a-bear to see the poor creatures taking on;
she was too, too tender-hearted." And so she was, to every one but her
husband, a tall, simple-hearted rabbit-faced man, a good deal older than
herself. Fully agreeing with Sir Richard Grenville's great axiom,
that he who cannot obey cannot rule, Lucy had been for the last
five-and-twenty years training him pretty smartly to obey her, with the
intention, it is to be charitably hoped, of letting him rule her in
turn when his lesson was perfected. He bore his honors, however, meekly
enough, having a boundless respect for his wife's wisdom, and a firm
belief in her supernatural powers, and let her go her own way and earn
her own money, while he got a little more in a truly pastoral method
(not extinct yet along those lonely cliffs), by feeding a herd of some
dozen donkeys and twenty goats. The donkeys fetched, at each low-tide,
white shell-sand which was to be sold for manure to the neighbor