A Marvellous Herb. 113 
it, it was indeed hardly a legend; for he could 
disclose every detail, and what has here occupied a 
few sentences took him the best part of an hour to 
relate. 
Now and then the western clouds after the sunset 
assume a shape resembling that of a vast extended 
wing, as of a gigantic bird in full flight—the extreme 
tip nearly reaching the zenith, the body of the bird 
just below the horizon. The resemblance is some- 
times so perfect that the layers of feathers are 
traceable by an imaginative eye. This, the old folk 
say, is the wing of the Archangel Michael, and it 
bodes no good to the evil ones among the nations, for 
he is on his way to execute a dread command. 
Herbs are still believed in implicitly by some. 
Not long since I met a labourer, one of the better 
class too, whom I had known previously, and now 
found deeply depressed because of the death of a son, 
The poor fellow had had every attention ; the clergy- 
man had exerted himself, and wine and nourishing 
luxuries had not been spared, nor the best of medical 
advice. That he admitted, but still regretted one 
thing. There was a herb, which grew beside rivers, 
and was known to but a few, that was a certain cure for 
the kind of wasting disease which had baffled educated 
skill. There was an old man living somewhere by a 
river fifty miles away, who possessed the secret of this 
herb, and by it had accomplished marvellous cures, 
He had heard of him, but could not by any inquiry 
I 
