, and people from adjoining towns often sent
orders for quantities of Miss Thusa's marvelous thread.

She was now the guest of Mrs. Gleason, the mother of Helen, who always
appropriated to her use a nice little room in a snug corner of the
house, where she could turn her wheel from morning till night, and bend
over her beloved distaff. Helen, who was too young to be sent to school
by day, or to remain in the family sitting-room at night, as her mother
followed the good, healthy rule of _early to bed_ and _early to rise_,
seemed thrown by fate upon Miss Thusa's miraculous resources for
entertainment and instruction. Thus her imagination became
preternaturally developed, while the germs of reason and judgment lay
latent and unquickened.

"Please stop spinning Miss Thusa, and tell me a story," said the child,
venturing to put her little foot on the treadle, and giving the crank a
sudden jerk.

"Yes! Don't tease--I must smooth the flax on the distaff and wet the
thread on the spindle first. There--that will do. Come, yellow bird,
jump into my lap, and say what you want me to tell you. Shall it he the
gray kitten, with the big bunch of keys on its neck, that turned into a
beautiful princess, or the great ogre, who killed all the little
children he could find for breakfast and supper?"

"No," replied Helen, shuddering with a strange mixture of horror and
delight. "I want to hear something you never told before."

"Well--I will tell you the story of the _worm-eaten traveler_. It is
half singing, half talking, and a powerful story it is. I would act it
out, too, if you would sit down in the corner till I've done. Let go of
me, if you want to hear it."

"Please Miss Thusa," said the excited child, drawing her stool into the
corner, and crouching herself upon it, while Miss Thusa rose up, and
putting back her wheel, prepared to commence her heterogeneous
performance. She often "_acted out_" her stories and songs, to the great
admiration of children and the amusement of older people, but it was
very seldom this favor was granted, without earnest and reiterated
entreaties. It was the first time she had ever spontaneously offered to
personate the Sibyl, whose oracles she uttered, and it was a proof that
an unusual fit of inspiration was upon her.

She was very tall and spare. When in the attitude of spinning, she
stooped over her distaff, she lost much of her original height, but the
moment she pushed aside her wheel, her fi