weary eyes, and
began--when, lo! a miracle.

Instead of one hand, there were four at work--four hands, four
needles, four lines of thread. _The four marguerites were all being
embroidered at the same time!_ The piskies had forgiven, had
remembered her at last, after these many years, and were coming to
her help, as of old. Ah, madam, the tears of thankfulness that ran
from her hot eyes and fell upon those golden marguerites of yours!

Of course her eyes were disordered. There was only one flower,
really. There was only one embroidered in the morning, when they
found her sobbing, with your bodice still in her lap, and took her to
the hospital; and that is why the dressmakers failed to keep faith
with you for once, and made you so angry.

Dear lady, the piskies are not easily summoned, in these days.

THE MAYOR OF GANTICK.

One of these days I hope to write a treatise on the Mayors of
Cornwall--dignitaries whose pleasant fame is now night, remembered
only in some neat by-word or saying of the country people. Thus you
may hear, now and again, of "the Mayor of Falmouth, who thanked God
when the town gaol was enlarged," "the Mayor of Market Jew, sitting
in his own light," or "the Mayor of Calenich, who walked two miles to
ride one." But the one whose history perplexed me most, till I heard
the truth from an eye-witness, was "the mad Mayor of Gantick, who was
wise for a long day, and then died of it."

It was an old tin-streamer who told me--a thin fellow with a
shrivelled mouth, and a back bent two-double. And I heard it on the
very hearthstone of the Mayor's cottage, one afternoon, as we sat and
smoked in the shadow of the crumbling mud wall, with a square of blue
sky for roof, and for carpet a tangle of brambles, nettles, and rank
grass.

It seems that the village of Gantick, half a mile away, was used once
in every year to purge itself of evil. To this end the villagers
prepared a huge dragon of pasteboard and marched out with it to a
sandy common, since cut up by tin-works, but still known as Dragon's
Moor. Here they would choose one of their number to be Mayor, and
submit to him all questions of conscience, and such cases of
notorious evil living as the law failed to provide for.
Summary justice waited on all his decisions; and as the village wag
was usually chosen for the post, you may guess that the horse-play
was rough at times. When this was over, and the public conscience
purified, the