they were bein’ creeped up on, an’ hinted at by Some One or other that couldn’t rightly shape their trouble.  Oh, I lay they sweated!  Man an’ maid, woman an’ child, their nature done ’em no service all the weeks while the Marsh was swarvin’ up with Pharisees.  But they was Flesh an’ Blood, an’ Marsh men before all.  They reckoned the signs sinnified trouble for the Marsh.  Or that the sea ‘ud rear up against Dymchurch Wall an’ they’d be drownded like Old Winchelsea; or that the Plague was comin’.  So they looked for the meanin’ in the sea or in the clouds—­far an’ high up.  They never thought to look near an’ knee-high, where they could see naught.

’Now there was a poor widow at Dymchurch under the Wall, which, lacking man or property, she had the more time for feeling; and she come to feel there was a Trouble outside her doorstep bigger an’ heavier than aught she’d ever carried over it.  She had two sons—­one born blind, an’ t’other struck dumb through fallin’ off the Wall when he was liddle.  They was men grown, but not wage-earnin’, an’ she worked for ’em, keepin’ bees and answerin’ Questions.’

‘What sort of questions?’ said Dan.

‘Like where lost things might be found, an’ what to put about a crooked baby’s neck, an’ how to join parted sweethearts.  She felt the Trouble on the Marsh same as eels feel thunder.  She was a wise woman.’

‘My woman was won’erful weather-tender, too,’ said Hobden.  ’I’ve seen her brish sparks like off an anvil out of her hair in thunderstorms.  But she never laid out to answer Questions.’

‘This woman was a Seeker, like, an’ Seekers they sometimes find.  One night, while she lay abed, hot an’ achin’, there come a Dream an’ tapped at her window, an’ “Widow Whitgift,” it said, “Widow Whitgift!”

‘First, by the wings an’ the whistlin’, she thought it was peewits, but last she arose an’ dressed herself, an’ opened her door to the Marsh, an’ she felt the Trouble an’ the Groanin’ all about her, strong as fever an’ ague, an’ she calls:  “What is it?  Oh, what is it?”

’Then ‘twas all like the frogs in the diks peepin’; then ’twas all like the reeds in the diks clip-clappin’; an’ then the great Tide-wave rummelled along the Wall, an’ she couldn’t hear proper.

‘Three times she called, an’ three times the Tide-wave did her down.  But she catched the quiet between, an’ she cries out, “What is the Trouble on the Marsh that’s been lying down with my heart an’ arising with my body this month gone?” She felt a liddle hand lay hold on her gown-hem, an’ she stooped to the pull o’ that liddle hand.’

Tom Shoesmith spread his huge fist before the fire and smiled at it.

’"Will the sea drown the Marsh?” she says.  She was a Marsh woman first an’ foremost.

‘"No,” says the liddle voice.  “Sleep sound for all o’ that.”

‘"Is the Plague comin’ to the Marsh?” she says.  Them was all the ills she knowed.