buried in the aforesaid
chapel in a most fair tomb; her image was of latoun gilt, and with a
colour on it; her hands and face were of silver, and her hair, gilded and
most curiously wrought, flowed down from her head over the marble.

It was a strange sight to see that gold and brass and marble inside that
rough chapel which stood on the marshy common, near the river.

Now, every St. Peter's day, when the sun was at its hottest, in the mid-
summer noontide, my mother (though at other times she only wore such
clothes as the folk about us) would dress herself most richly, and shut
the shutters against all the windows, and light great candles, and sit as
though she were a queen, till the evening: sitting and working at a
frame, and singing as she worked.

And what she worked at was two wings, wrought in gold, on a blue ground.

And as for what she sung, I could never understand it, though I know now
it was not in Latin.

And she used to charge me straightly never to let any man into the house
on St. Peter's day; therefore, I and our dog, which was a great old
bloodhound, always kept the door together.

But one St. Peter's day, when I was nearly twenty, I sat in the house
watching the door with the bloodhound, and I was sleepy, because of the
shut-up heat and my mother's singing, so I began to nod, and at last,
though the dog often shook me by the hair to keep me awake, went fast
asleep, and began to dream a foolish dream without hearing, as men
sometimes do: for I thought that my mother and I were walking to mass
through the snow on a Christmas day, but my mother carried a live goose
in her hand, holding it by the neck, instead of her rosary, and that I
went along by her side, not walking, but turning somersaults like a
mountebank, my head never touching the ground; when we got to the chapel
door, the old priest met us, and said to my mother, 'Why dame alive, your
head is turned green! Ah! never mind, I will go and say mass, but don't
let little Mary there go,' and he pointed to the goose, and went.

Then mass begun, but in the midst of it, the priest said out aloud, 'Oh I
forgot,' and turning round to us began to wag his grey head and white
beard, throwing his head right back, and sinking his chin on his breast
alternately; and when we saw him do this, we presently began also to
knock our heads against the wall, keeping time with him and with each
other, till the priest said, 'Peter! it's dragon-time now,' whereat