traight at him. And in the bat of an eye he said:

As I went over London bridge
I met my sister Ann;
I pulled off her head and sucked her blood
And let her body stand.

"A bottle of wine," two in the corner spoke at once, which was against
the rules, but both thought Steve was looking in their direction.

"Tell another," Aunt Lindie settled the matter.

"As I went over London bridge I met a man," said Steve. "If I was to
tell his name I'd be to blame. I have told his name five times over. Who
was it?"

No one spoke up for they all knew the answers to Steve's simple,
threadbare riddles. "The answer is I," he said, running a hand over his
bristling pompadour.

And lest he assert his rights by starting on another, Aunt Lindie, which
was her right, gave a jingle and the answer to it too.

As I walked out in my garden of lilies
There I saw endible, crindible, cronable kernt
Ofttimes pestered my eatable, peatable, partable present,
And I called for my man William, the second of quillan,
To bring me a quill of anatilus feather
That I might conquer the endible, crindible, cronable kernt.

She looked about the puzzled faces. "I'll not plague your minds to find
the answer. I'll give it to you. As the woman walked out in her garden
she saw a rabbit eating her cabbage and she called for her second
husband to bring her a shotgun that she might kill the rabbit."

The old teller of riddles pointed out that there was good in their
telling. "People have been known to be scared out of doing meanness just
by a riddle. Now what would you think this one would be?

Riddle to my riddle to my right,
You can't guess where I laid last Friday night;
The wind did blow, my heart did ache
To see what a hole that fox did make.

Whoever knows can answer." She looked at Josie Binner. "You have the
best remembrance of anyone I know. Don't tell me you can't give the
answer."

"I never heard it before," Josie had to admit, twisting her kerchief and
looking down at the floor.

"Speak out!" urged Aunt Lindie. But no one did so she riddled the
riddle. "A wicked man once planned to kill his sweetheart. He went first
to dig her grave and then meant to throw her into it. She got an inkling
of his intent, watched from the branches of a tree, then accused him
with that riddle. He skipped the country and so that ri