“I have heard of it,” answered Alice, with a little shiver of superstition; “I have always longed to know more about it.”
“The less you knows of it the better for ’ee. Pray to the Lord every night, young woman, that you may never see it.”
“Oh, that is all superstition, Nanny. I should like to see it particularly. I never could understand how it came; though it seems to be clear that it does come. It has only come twice in five hundred years, according to what they say of it. I have heard the old rhyme about it ever—oh, ever since I can remember.”
“So have I heered. But they never gets things right now; they be so careless. How have you heered of it, Miss Alice?”
“Like this—as near as I can remember:—
“‘When the Woeburn brake the plain,
Ill it boded for Lorraine.
When the Woeburn came again,
Death and dearth it brought Lorraine.
If it ever floweth more,