old, like most in Crockett's Hollow, owned no
such luxury as a rocker. But for all the crooning and jolting small
Margie fretted, rubbed her small fists into her eyes, and drew up her
legs. "Might be colic," thought Talithie. "Babes have to fret and cry
some, makes them grow," offered the young father who continued to
whittle a butter bowl long promised. However, for all his notions about
it, Talithie was troubled. Never before had she known the babe to be so
fretful.

The log fire was burning low and in the dimness of the room she leaned
down to the hearth, picked up a pine stick and lighted it. She held it
close above the babe's face. The small eyes were open wide and strangely
staring. Talithie passed the bright light to and fro before the little
one's gaze. But never once did the babe bat a lash.

"Lord God Almighty!" Talithie cried, dropping the lighted pine to the
floor. "Our babe is blind, Jasper! Blind, I tell you! Stone blind!"

Jasper leaped to his feet. The wooden bowl, the knife, clattered to the
floor. The pine stick still burning lay where it had fallen.

"Our babe can't be blind," he moaned, falling to his knees. "Our
helpless babe that's done no harm to any living soul, our spotless pure
babe can't be so afflicted!" he sobbed bitterly, putting his arms about
the two he loved best in all the world.

The pine stick where Talithie dropped it burned deep into the puncheon
floor leaving a scar that never wore away.

Again old Granny Withers hobbled over the mountain as fast as she had
the night she bore the news to Sabrina about the bat that flew over the
fair bride's head. "Talithie's babe is blind--stone blind, Sabrina
Ashby! Do you hear that?"

This time Widow Ashby's Sabrina did not cry out in glee. She did not
clap her hands above her head and laugh wildly. The forsaken girl sank
into a chair. Her face turned deathly white, she stared ahead, unseeing.

It was a long time before she spoke. Then there was no one there to
hear. Granny Withers had scurried off in the dark and Widow Ashby--she
was long since dead and gone.

"A toad in a bottle," the frightened Sabrina whispered and her voice
echoed in the barren room, "a toad in a bottle works a conjure. Ma's
gone and now Talithie's babe and Jasper's is plum stone blind." She
swayed to and fro, crying hysterically. Then she buried her face in the
vise of her hands, moaning, "Little Margie Tipton, your pretty blue eyes
won't never 'tice no false true