‘But I did a horrid thing, one time. More than once, too, I did it.
You were only toddling around back then but there was another man here in those days, milking alongside me in the mornings, and he had an ass and the ass was going hungry for want of grass so he asked me if I‘d meet him at the foot of the back lane, at dark, and bring him a bag of hay.
It was a hard winter, one of the worst we‘d known, and I said I would, and every evening I filled a sack with hay and met him there, near the foot of the lane, where the rhododendrons are, at dark.
For a good long while this went on but onenight as I was going down the lane,
something that wasn‘t human, an ugly thing with no hands came came out of the ditch, and blocked me and that put an end to me stealing Mrs Wilson‘s hay.
It‘s too sorry I am now over it, and never once did I tell it to a soul before this only in the confession box.‘ - P83