ress Talithie Tipton. I've named the toad for you!" she gloated
as she made fast the stopper. "You'll perish there. That's what you'll
do. Didn't old Granny Withers tell me how she worked such conjure on a
false true love in her young day? He died within twelve month. Slipped
off a high cliff!" Stealthily, in the dusk, Sabrina made her way through
the brush to a lonely spot far up the hollow where the big rock hung.
There she put the bottle far back under a slab of stone.

She waited eagerly to hear some word of the wedded couple.

One day, a few months later, old Granny Withers came hobbling again over
the mountain. "Jasper's woman is heavy with child," the toothless
midwife grinned, moistening her wrinkled lips with the tip of her
tongue. "He's done axed me to tend her."

Not even to Granny Withers did Sabrina tell of the toad in the bottle.
"If you ever tell to a living soul what you've done, that breaks the
conjure," the old midwife had warned long ago. So Sabrina kept a still
tongue and bided her time. Nor did she have long to wait.

News traveled swiftly by word-of-mouth. And bad news was fleetest of
all.

At first Jasper and his wife were unaware of their babe's fate, though
Talithie had noticed one day, when the midwife carried the little one to
the door where the sun was shining brightly, that it did not bat an eye.
Granny Withers noticed too, but she said never a word. The young mother
kept her fear within her heart. She did not speak of it to Jasper.

Two weeks later, after Granny Withers had gone, Talithie was up doing
her own work. Supper was over and the young parents sat by the log fire.
There was chill in the air. The babe had whimpered in her bee-gum crib,
a crib that the proud young father had fashioned from a hollowed log in
which wild bees had once stored their honey. Cut the log in two, did
Jasper, scraped it clean, and with the rounded side turned down it made
as fine a cradle as anyone could wish. With eager hands Talithie placed
in it, months before her babe was born, a clean feather tick, no bigger
than a pillow of their own bed. Pieced a little quilt too, did the
happy, expectant mother.

How contentedly the little one snuggled there even the very first time
Talithie put her in the crib! Rarely did the child whimper, but this
night small Margie was fretful. Talithie gathered her up and came back
to the hearth crooning softly as she jolted to and fro in a straight
chair. The Tipton househ