94 A SPRING HERESY 



Many a strenuous life has been spent to make a 

 less enduring name. To make a name what a 

 commentary is here ! No doubt, as is usual, there 

 went to the making of Sally's immortality a person, 

 a deed, a name. Who she was or what she did, no 

 one now knows. Her name, linked, like enough 

 by tragedy, with this small, deep pond, reputed 

 bottomless, passes hourly unheeded from mouth to 

 mouth in the countryside, and only some stranger, 

 provoked by curiosity, will ask at times " Who 

 was Sally ? " to be answered by a look of silent 

 surprise from those who never reflected that there 

 went with it once a human life distinct from, albeit, 

 perchance, tragically connected with, this Hole that 

 still bears her name. In a few years the public 

 surveyor will plumb its mythical depths and, levelling 

 it up, make way for the suburban artisan. Sally, 

 with her fame or shame, will be heard of no more in 

 the ways of the living. 



Strangely enough, when approaching this spot 

 early one spring morning ere any one was abroad, I 

 noticed a woman seated on the bottom bar of a 

 broken fence that guards the pond. Seeing she was 

 engaged in coiling up her hair, which hung loosely at 

 her back, I prepared to pass without regarding her. 

 But as I went by she spoke, and, turning, I took 

 from her a sheet of paper she held out by her left 

 hand. " I have lost my right arm," it ran (I saw 

 that the arm alleged to be missing was hidden closely 

 in her shawl), and proceeded to ask for assistance. 



She was a diminutive gipsy-like creature, with 

 black, wandering eyes, and a mass of black hair of 

 which she was evidently not uncareful. 



