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It was an old stone house on the Borders, and seemed to have got its tints from the grey skies that hung above it. It was cold-looking without, but cosy within, "like a north-country heart," said Miss Kitty, who was a woman of sentiment, and kept a commonplace book. It was long before Miss Kitty's time that Lob Lie-by-the-fire first came to Lingborough.
"I would not accept good luck from a doubtful quarter to save Lingborough. But if It can face this excellent clergyman, the Being who haunted my great-grandfather's farm is still welcome to the old barns, and you, Thomasina, need not grudge It cream or curds." "You're quite right, sister Betty," said Miss Kitty. "You always are; but oh dear, oh dear!"
" When, in one night, ere glimpse of morn, His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn That ten day-labourers could not end, Then lies him down the Lubber-fiend, And, stretched out all the chimney's length, Basks at the fire his hairy strength." It was said that a Lob Lie-by-the-fire once haunted the little old Hall at Lingborough.
But when it was proved that the tramp-boy had stolen nothing, when all search for him was vain, and when prosperity faded from the place season by season and year by year, there were old folk who whispered that the gaudily-clothed child Miss Betty had found under the broom-bush had something more than common in him, and that whoever and whatever had offended the eerie creature, he had taken the luck of Lingborough with him when he went away.
Never had there been such a preserving season at Lingborough within the memory of Thomasina. The truth is, hobgoblins, from Puck to Will-o'-the-wisp, are apt to play practical jokes and knock people about whom they meet after sunset. A dozen tales of such were rife, and folks were more amused than amazed by Lob Lie-by-the-fire's next prank.
She had heard that he had originally come from some other household, where he had been offended. But whether he had gone elsewhere when he forsook Lingborough, or whether "such things had left the country" for good, she did not pretend to say.
"Do you think there'd be any harm in leaving it alone, sister Betty?" said Miss Kitty, tremulously. They had reached Lingborough, and the parson had come in with them, by Miss Betty's request, and Thomasina had been duly examined. "Eh, Miss Betty, why should ye chase away good luck with the minister?" cried she. "Sister Kitty! Thomasina!" said Miss Betty.
Miss Betty called him John Broom, but the people called him by the name he had earned. And long after his black hair lay white and thick on his head, like snow on the old barn roof, and when his dark eyes were dim in an honoured old age, the village children would point him out to each other, crying, "There goes Lob Lie-by-the-fire, the Luck of Lingborough!"
She always dreaded that he would not return, and a little ruse which she adopted of giving him money to make bargains for foreign articles of vertu with sailors, is responsible for many of the choicest ornaments in the Lingborough parlour. "The sock'll bring him home," said Mrs. Broom, and home he came, and never could say what he had been doing.
She had carried the baby through his boyhood about the Lingborough fields whilst she was dressing; and he was attending her own funeral in the capacity of an attached and faithful servant, in black livery with worsted frogs, as she sprinkled salt on her buttered toast at breakfast, when she was startled from this affecting daydream by Miss Betty's voice.
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