By the time she had finished, the whole court was spellbound and she herself almost in tears from excitement, the Goblin had played so rapturously. Gold was showered upon her, flowers were thrown to her in basketfuls, and the King whipped off his crown, dug out the biggest ruby with his pocket-knife, and presented it to her himself.

“Now then!” cried the head of the police to the Goblin, “back to prison with you! And tell that fierce-looking nephew of yours to go quietly, or it will be the worse for him!”

“If you will come with me as my musician,” said Laurine, “I will beg the King on my knees to let you go. I have never danced to such playing in my life. Will you come?”

“Not without Swayn,” said the Goblin.

“But I hate the drum,” said Laurine.

“Then he need not play it,” replied he.

“And I don’t want him,” continued Laurine.

“It is both or neither,” said the Goblin.

“Oh, very well, then,” said she, turning away. “He can come as my servant.”

So she went to the King the very next day, and the King, seeing an excellent chance of getting rid of the prisoners without the expenses of an execution, consented.

So the Lord Mayor gave the Goblin back his fiddle, and the three set out on their travels together.

“Uncle Sackbut tells me that you object to the drum,” said Swayn to Laurine, “so I’ll leave it behind, and I shall have all the more time to attend upon you.”

Certainly he made a most valuable servant. He cleaned her little gold shoes, he robbed all the jasmine-bushes to make her girdles, and when anyone annoyed her, he looked so big and fierce that people were only too glad to get out of the way.

They travelled about for a whole year, and Laurine was beginning to be tired of such a restless life. When they came to a grim-looking town built on a rushing river, she made up her mind to dance there for the last time; for the Goblin had begged her to return with him to his house in the wood, and she had promised to do so. Swayn was to come too, for there was no doubt that it was impossible to get on without him.

“Patience,” said the Goblin to him, “and all will come right.”

“Patience is a long word,” replied Swayn.

As they approached the town gates a crowd of sour-looking men came out to meet them with fierce eyes and frowning faces.

“You need not come here, thinking to bewitch us with light ways and mountebank tricks,” they said to Laurine. “We have heard about you, and we know that you are a witch!”

“A witch! a witch!” they shouted.

“Why,” cried someone in the crowd, “she has even got a Goblin for her musician!”

Then they all began to cry “Witch! witch!” at the top of their voices, till she could hardly hear herself speak. And in a moment they had surrounded her and were dragging her away.

Oh! how the poor Goblin stamped and raved! but, unfortunately, he was too small to hurt anyone much. Swayn began knocking down everybody he could reach, but there were so many that he was soon overpowered.

“It is the witch we want! It is the witch we want!” cried the people.

The crowd turned back to the town. Some seized Laurine by the wrists, and some by her long hair, and the rest held her companions while they hurried her through the city gates, leaving them outside. Then the doors were locked, and they lost sight of her.

As Laurine was dragged along the streets, a very good idea came into her head. She was quite sure that, by hook or by crook, Swayn would try to rescue her, so she managed to pluck the flowers from her jasmine girdle, and to drop them behind her as she went, that he might see which way she had gone; and when there were no more left, she plucked off the leaves, and dropped them too. Just when the very last leaf was gone, they came to a little stone cell built by the parapet of the city wall, where it was low and overlooked the river. Into this dreadful place they thrust her, turning the key in the great lock, and calling to her that they would come in the morning to drown her in the water below. One man was left to stand outside and guard the door, and he tied the large key to his belt.

It was quite dark in the cell, for only a little light could come in at a barred window, whose sill she could just reach by standing on tiptoe. Poor Laurine wept bitterly when she thought that she was going to be drowned next morning, and she cried all the more when she remembered how unkind she had been to Swayn, and how much he loved her. She wished she had not been so cruel. How often she had thrown her gold slippers at him and told him he had not made them shine enough, when he had spent hours rubbing and polishing them! How many times she had seen him sad and heavy with the weight of her scornful words! She was afraid that, even if he got into the town, the jasmine flowers would be so much trampled that he would not guess what they were. She took off her little gold shoes and put them up on the window-sill, just inside the bars. “If he passes he will see them,” she said. The man outside was so near the wall that the depth of the sill hid them from his sight.

Swayn was only waiting till it was dark to get into the town. The river ran all round it, but he could swim well, and he had noticed a place where the wall was low and a beam stuck out which he thought he could reach with a leap. When the moon was up he left the Goblin in a thicket and plunged into the river, and, once across, he ran along under the walls till he came to the big beam. After one or two attempts he managed to spring up and clasp it with his hands, and then he swung himself up without much difficulty, and was soon standing on it, looking down into the moonlit streets of the city.

Nobody was about. The ground was much higher on the inside, so he let himself down easily, but, as he had no notion where they had taken Laurine, he did not know which way to go. He met few people in the deserted streets, and as the whole of the crowd which had captured her was sitting planning how it should drown her on the morrow, no one had any idea who he was.

He was almost in despair, when he noticed a jasmine flower lying at his feet; then he saw that there was another farther on, and yet another after that, and he knew that she had dropped them that he might trace her. He followed the track through several streets, and as he went he kept singing, that she might hear his voice if she were anywhere near.

he sang. He dared not call, for fear of disturbing the sleeping town.

At last he came to where flowers and leaves stopped, near an open space by the town wall. Close to it was a little stone cell with a barred window and a door, in front of which lay a sleeping man, with a key tied to his belt. It was easy to see that no one could get in without awakening him.

Swayn looked up to the window above the sleeper’s head, and saw the two little shoes placed together on the sill. He crept nearer, and sang again:

and in a moment he heard a voice inside the cell singing softly:

He came a little closer and sang:

Then the spangled veil was thrown through the window-bars, and he caught it as it fell.

Stealthily he went up to the sleeper and cut the heavy key from his belt with his knife; then, as the man stirred, he thrust the veil into his mouth to stop his cries, and, seizing him in his strong arms, flung him over the low parapet into the river swirling below. In another moment he had unlocked the door of the cell and was embracing Laurine, while she asked his forgiveness for all her unkindness and promised to marry him if they managed to get out of the city alive.

There was an old piece of tattered sacking lying in a corner of the prison, and she took off her rich dress and wrapped the horrible rag about her. They tucked away her long hair and tied a bandage over her face, so that she looked like some wretched beggar, and, when they had locked the door and pitched the key into the river, she set off down the silent streets, Swayn following a little way behind. They hid in a dark alley near the town gates, and waited till the hour should come to unlock them at dawn. The sentry on duty was not the same man who had closed them after Laurine on the preceding day, and he let the poor beggar go through with a jeer. As for Swayn, following at a little distance, he took no notice of him beyond bidding him a friendly good-morning. So the lovers were soon in the open country, pressing forward to the thicket where the Fiddling Goblin had promised to wait for his nephew’s return.

You may be sure that they spared no haste in getting away. By the time the sun was high they had reached a village, where they procured horses. All the money that Laurine had made by her dancing was kept by the Goblin tied up in a bag with his fiddle; so they lacked no means of getting forward, and they turned their heads towards the country from which they had started.

When they reached the wood they could have shouted for joy. As they came to the middle of it the Goblin stamped his heel, and all the candles of the horse-chestnut trees burst into a blaze of light, for they had been away a whole year, and it was the season of blossom again. Swayn and Laurine promised to live with their uncle Sackbut, and never to leave him any more.

They were soon married, with great pomp and solemnity, the only drawback being that the Goblin could not make up his mind whether to be best man, or give away the bride, or play the wedding music on his fiddle. But the matter was happily settled by his doing all three.

Peter and Janet and the miller stood on the rising ground by the farm; the sound of the wheel came to them, and the whir of grinding. Before them lay the tidal marshes that stretched to the seaport town. It was the same town through whose streets the Water-Nix followed the pedlar when she left dry land for the last time to swim out and join the water-kelpies. It looked like a blue shadow-town now, cut sharp against sky and sea, with its tall steeple reflected in the wet sand.

“I have often had it in my mind to tell you a strange story my grandmother heard about a man who lived in that place,” said the miller, pointing across the salt marsh.

“Is it true?” asked Peter.

“That’s more than I know,” replied his friend, “for I never asked my granny, and maybe if I had, she couldn’t have told me. If you like the story you can think it true, and if you don’t we’ll say it isn’t.”

“Have you ever been in that town?” the miller asked Janet.

“Never,” said she.

“Well, just where you see the steeple rising and the glint of the sun on the weathercock is the High Street. It’s a wide road, with windows looking down on it from either side; and at the end, as you go to the docks, is an old house with carved gable-ends, and in a niche of its wall is the statue of a man.”

“And is that the man the story is about?” inquired little Peter.

“The same,” said the miller. “But, to tell you about him, I must begin somewhere very far away from the place where the old statue stands.”

“How far?” asked inquisitive Peter.

“I don’t know,” answered the miller, “because nobody I’ve ever seen has been there.

“But I thought you were going to tell about the man!” cried Peter.

“If you listen hard enough, you’ll hear the grass grow,” said the miller, “and if you listen long enough, you’ll hear about the man.”

Once upon a time, as I said before, there was a Princess who had five elder sisters, the most beautiful ladies ever seen; and their father thought a deal of them, but not much of the youngest, who was small and not nearly so pretty. But she was very nice, all the same, and the thing she loved best was to go hunting after flowers. Nobody cared what she did or where she went, and she spent all her days wandering in woods and valleys looking for her plants. There was little she did not know about them, and if she had not been a Princess, with no need to work, she might have made her fortune by writing books about them and their histories. One day as she roamed about she came to a place she had never seen before—a little valley full of great trees, with a winding stream rushing through it like a silver thread. Beside the water grew a clump of the most lovely yellow irises.

She liked the spot so much that she returned to it every day; and she would sit for hours at a time beside the iris-bed, with her elbows on her knees, dreaming about wonderful foreign plants she had never seen and the strange descriptions of them she had read in books.

Farther up the valley, beyond the trees, could be seen the roofs of a castle which stood on towering rocks. She did not know who it belonged to, so one day, as she sat by the water, she said aloud: “I wonder who lives there?”

“The witch, the witch!” sang the iris-flowers behind her. The sound went through them like a sigh.

She started and turned round, but there was no one to be seen; and again as she looked the flowers repeated: “The witch, the witch!”

Then she asked them many more questions, but nothing would they say. Perhaps it was all they knew, or perhaps what she took for words was only the rustling of the long stiff leaves one against the other. But that’s as may be. In any case, it roused her curiosity so much that she rose and went off towards the castle. She had no sooner got among the trees than by came the witch herself.

“Who are you?” inquired the old woman.

The Princess explained, and politely asked to be forgiven for trespassing.

“Pray don’t apologize,” said the witch, “and do me the favour to give me your arm as far as my castle. I have, as you see, no staff, and I am not so young as I was.”

The Princess agreed willingly, and they walked on together. The old woman was wrapped in a trailing black cloak, and her hair hung over her eyes, like the hair of all other witches. She seemed rather a pleasant body, though her nose and chin were certainly a little too near together. When they had climbed as far as the castle gate, she invited her companion to come in and rest, and the Princess, who feared nobody, followed her. They sat down together at a window overlooking the valley; from it she could see the winding water and the clump of irises.

“It is the most fortunate thing in the world that I met you,” began the old woman, “for I am much in need of advice from somebody. My difficulty is this: I have grown very tired of being a witch, and I wish to leave my profession and become like other people. I am learning, as you have noticed, to do without my crooked staff. Last week I sold my broomstick and bought a very pretty little brown horse instead, and I have given my black cat to a friend. My appearance is still not quite what I could wish, and I really do not know what kind of clothes to get, nor how to arrange my hair. Other witches can tell me nothing, for they know as little as I do, but your advice would be the greatest help to me.”

“I shall be very pleased to do anything I can,” said the Princess.

“If you will consent to stay with me for a few days till my wardrobe is complete, I shall be more obliged than I can say,” continued the old woman. “Use my house as your own, and everything in it.”

And so it was all arranged in five minutes.

The Princess was uncommonly useful. She brushed the witch’s hair and pinned it up tidily, and made her a fine lace head-dress, which gave her a dignified air. She sent to the nearest town for silks and brocades and buckled shoes, and, instead of the crooked staff that her friend missed so much, she bought her a handsome stick with an amber head.

The witch was delighted, for she looked both refined and venerable as she stood before her glass.

“Here!” she exclaimed, taking up her old black cloak, which lay on the floor, “this must be thrown away.”

She was just going to cast it upon the fire when the Princess stopped her.

“Oh no, no!” she cried, snatching it from her, “don’t destroy it. Pray, pray give it to me!”

“What for?” exclaimed the witch. “A Princess in a witch’s cloak? A pretty idea, indeed!”

But the Princess clung to it.

“Surely you will not refuse me,” she said, “since you do not want it any more! How often have I heard you say that you could fly wherever you liked in it? Think what it would be for me if I were able to go off in it to foreign countries, and see all the wonderful plants I have heard so much about! Only give it to me and I will be your debtor for life.”

“Well, after all, why not?” said the witch. “One good turn certainly deserves another. Keep it, my dear. If you put it on, and hold out your arms like wings on either side, it will take you up into the sky, and you can sail along like a ship. When you wish to descend, just fold your arms and you will come down to earth quite gently.”

The Princess took her treasure and locked it up in her own chamber, for fear the witch should change her mind. The next day she bade her farewell, and, throwing on the cloak, spread out her arms. Up she went, easily and gently, and when she had decided where she should go, she turned her face southwards and was soon far, far away, a little speck among the clouds. The witch looked after her till she could see her no more.

She was now in the seventh heaven of joy. She went to every country she had ever heard about. She saw the sea-pinks and water-asters of lonely islands known only to screaming gulls; she stood in forests where creepers were thrown like veils over the branches and the air was heavy with the scent of fringed and spotted orchids, purple and mauve and cream-yellow. She wandered beside lakes, walled in by solemn trees that hid the sun and strewn with red and white lilies; she saw the groves of cherry-blossom that hang on the steep gorges of blue hills far away, and the giant palms and scarlet flowers of the South. At last, after many months of wandering, she flew northward and up the coast of the North Sea till she was right over the town before us.

It was midnight as she stood, wrapped in her black cloak, on the topmost point of the steeple. The folds fluttered and crackled, as you may hear a flag flutter and crackle if you stand by a flagstaff on a tower; but no one noticed it or saw her, for everyone but the watchman was in bed, and he was asleep too, though he was paid to be awake. In the bright moonlight she sailed down to the empty pavement of the High Street, among the dark shadows of the gable-ends. It was winter now and the frost was iron-hard over the whole country. She went quickly through the streets, for she did not care for towns, determining that when the sun rose next day she would be well on her way back to the witch’s castle in the valley. But she was rather tired and wanted a few hours of sleep first. She left the town and flew up this very road and past the mill—so I have heard—till she came to an old deserted cottage that once stood not far from here by the wayside. (There were still a few stones of it left when I was a child, and I used to pass it on my way to school.) The nettle-stalks were all frozen round it as she pushed through the broken door, meaning to lie down and sleep in shelter till morning. She had nothing to fear from the cold, for among the cloak’s other useful qualities was the power of keeping the person inside it perfectly warm. She was exceedingly surprised to see by the moonlight that someone else was in the miserable hovel.

A little starving boy was lying on a pile of straw in the corner. His poor face was thin and blue with cold, and he had crept into the hut because it was the only refuge he could find. He had walked all day, begging from door to door, for he had neither home nor friends nor food, and was worn out with fatigue and hunger. He lay, scarcely knowing where he was, for his wits were beginning to go, and when the Princess came in he was very near death. Strange dreams were in his brain. The moon struck brilliantly on a little window in the wall and the bitter cold had covered it with wonderful frost-flowers. It was the last thing he had seen before he closed his eyes, and he seemed to himself to be looking deep into a white forest that had grown up from the panes. Oh, how freezing it was! The forest was all made of frozen ferns and seaweed and feathers, like the white images on the glass. It stretched far, far away in alleys of fantastic sparkling fronds and glittering branches. How thick the strange, beautiful things grew! He had been once told that, if he was a good boy, when he died a white angel would come and take him to a place where he would never be sad or hungry any more. He was not sure that he did not see someone coming to him between the stems of the frozen forest. Perhaps it was the white angel.

He tried to sit up, but he was too weak. Poor little man, he had just enough life left in him to see that what he had taken for an angel was a woman in a black cloak.

The Princess went to him and bent over him. Then she took him up under the warm folds, bound him to her breast with her girdle, and hurried out of the hut. She spread out her arms, and, sailing with him into the wintry sky, flew over land and sea till she arrived at the witch’s castle.

The witch was overjoyed to see her come back, for she had been away half a year. They took the little boy and put him in a warm bed, in which he lay for many long days. But he was fed with the best of food, and such care was taken of him that when he got well he was able to run about and play in the valley and be happy from morning till night. They were so good to him that he soon forgot he had ever had any troubles at all.

The witch and the Princess got on so well together that they determined not to part, and they had plenty to do, looking after their charge and teaching him all the things he should know—how to read and write and say his prayers, and how to answer nicely when he was spoken to. When the Princess went, as she did every year, to find new flowers in foreign lands, he went with her, and helped her to carry back roots and seeds, which they planted in the valley; for the cloak was so large that, even when he grew bigger, there was room in it for them both. She taught him all her own knowledge, and as time went by and he grew up to be a man, he became even more learned than herself. He was very clever and so hardy and strong that nobody would have believed him to be the little wretched child who had lain starving in the hovel.

At last the time came when he was ready to go out into the world to seek his fortune. The parting gift that the Princess gave him was the black cloak. He was to have it on condition that he would come back once every year to go to some foreign land with her, and to visit the witch. He was given a small sum of money to start life with; and, as he was anxious to see the country of his birth and the hut in which he had been found, he wrapped himself in the cloak and came down, as the Princess had done, at midnight into the town across the marsh.

He was a fine, sensible fellow. Though he had lived in a castle, and perhaps because he had been brought up by a real Princess, he had no silly notions and was ready for any work he could find. He hired a modest lodging, and, going to the director of a large public garden that had been made in the town, he asked to be employed as a gardener. There was only one place vacant, and that was the very lowest, but he took it eagerly. His work was to wheel barrows, and sweep leaves, and cut grass, but he did it as carefully and put as much heart into it as if he was raising priceless flowers; for the Princess had brought him up strictly, and made him understand that honest work can only be made mean by the meanness of the person who does it.

Every year, when he had a few weeks’ holiday, he returned to the witch’s castle. No one saw him go, and no one saw him come back, and nobody knew how he managed to get the marvellous plants that he brought back with him. Very soon he was no longer an under-gardener, but the head of all, and by the time he was turning grey he had become the greatest botanist and teacher in the country. Learned men came from all parts of the kingdom to talk with him in his house with the carved gable-ends in the High Street of yonder town.

Time went by, and his fame spread all over the world. He grew old and his hair turned white, but still he went about wrapped in the black cloak, from which he never parted. His white beard flowed over his breast as he sat and wrote the books which helped to make him famous, or walked over the country, comparing plants and teaching his pupils out of his stores of wisdom. But at last he grew too infirm to walk long distances, and strangers coming to the town would look with awe upon his venerable figure as he passed through the streets. Everyone loved him, rich and poor alike.

And so it came to be that a great banquet was given in his honour, and the learned from all countries met together.

It was the middle of summer, and the hall in which it took place was decorated with flowers. A laurel-wreath hung over the chair in which he was to sit, costly fruits were brought from far-away lands, and the hall was filled with the glory of blossoming plants, many of which he had carried home with him as tiny seeds from his journeys. Wise men were there and beautiful ladies, students and great personages. All had come to see him and to hear him speak. The town was thronged—you would think there was no room in it for so much as one additional person.

When the feast was over he rose and began his speech, and silence fell upon everyone. Though he was frail and old, his voice was clear as he told them of the countries he had wandered in—the distant islands, the tropics, the golden East. No one imagined he had been so far afield, and his listeners wondered how he had contrived to make such voyages, for they knew that he was not rich and lived very simply in the old house at the end of the street. But everybody was enthralled; his life of work, his modesty, his great age and wisdom adorned him, in the eyes of his pupils and the assembled guests, like the jewels of a crown.

When the long speech was over he sat down, leaning back in his chair under the laurel-wreath, for the effort he had made was great. The guests remained respectfully in their places; they saw that he was weary and would need rest before he could listen to their congratulations. For a moment he closed his eyes, and when he opened them, a wonderful change seemed to have come over the scene before him.

The green boughs that filled the hall and the vases of flowers on the long tables were changing before his failing sight. Instead of the tall sheaves of roses a white forest was rising up, deep and pure, a forest that he had seen before. On either side the frost-flowers hung sparkling, their snow-crystals thick in the maze of white feathers and seaweed and ferns. The sprays and branches crowded on him in their dazzling myriads, dense and high, and far down the white vista into which he looked a figure was coming—a white figure. It was the angel.

He rose and grasped an outstretched hand.

“He is gone,” said the guests. “The exertion has been too much for him.” And his pupils and friends came round him, the tears standing in their eyes.

At that moment a gust of wind ran through the open doors of the hall, and the black cloak, which its owner had laid on a window-sill before he sat down at the table, was blown from it and flew out into the air. No one saw it go, but it rose on the sudden wind and sailed upwards, above the town, above the steeple, and disappeared like a dark cloud into the distant spaces of sky.

“Some day,” said the miller to little Peter, “I’ll take you to the town in my cart and show you the statue of that man in the wall of the old house.”

“And you’ll let me hold the end of the reins and the whip, and drive too, won’t you?” shouted the little boy.

“Well, perhaps I will,” laughed the miller, “only Janet must come too, to keep you in order.”

It was not long after this that the miller kept his promise. The horse was harnessed and away they drove to the town. He and Janet sat together, with Peter between them; the little boy held the end of the reins in one hand and the whip in the other, shouting and flourishing the lash about and thinking that coachmen were even better people than millers. Janet was happy too. She sat smiling and holding the tail of his coat, for fear he should overbalance himself and fall out into the road.

They left the cart at an inn, and went to see the house with its statue in the niche of the wall and carved gable-ends turned towards the street. It was now inhabited by poor families, whose washing flapped from the upper story like a row of banners over the head of the stone image. They stood on the pavement of the High Street and looked up to the giddy point of the steeple, where the weathercock twirled, more than a hundred feet in the air; they wondered at the quaint houses, with their outside staircases and their little wooden triangles of drying haddocks nailed against the wall. Then they strolled to the docks and stood at the place from which the lovely Nix had dived into the salt water. The tide lapped and gurgled against the quays, and the wind sang in the rigging of the ships alongside, and the fair-haired sailors talked in a foreign tongue, shouting to the fishwives who passed in their blue petticoats and amber necklaces along the cobbled roadway. The lighthouse stood on the promontory and the North Sea rolled and heaved outside the bar. It was a delightful holiday.

When they were tired of that they went out towards the seashore. The gulls were wheeling over the bents and sea-grass, and the sands lay smooth and fine to the edge of the waves. Little Peter rushed off to play, leaping about and throwing stones and gathering shells, while his companions sat upon the sand-dunes watching him.

“Janet,” said the miller, “I hear that your grandmother is going to leave the cottage by the pond and go away to some other place. Is that true, do you think?”

“I’m afraid so,” replied she.

“And you will go too?”

“Oh yes,” said Janet; “we have no other home.”

“But little Peter will miss his stories.”

Janet sighed. “Indeed he will,” she answered, sadly. “There is not much else we have in the way of pleasure.”

“But I can’t let you go,” the miller went on, “and what’s more, I won’t. Janet, if you’ll marry me and come and live with me at the mill-house, I’ll see that you are happy for the rest of your life. Do you think you could like me enough for that?”

“But I can’t leave Peter,” she exclaimed; “I could never be happy to think of him all alone, and perhaps being cruelly used.”

“But suppose he came too?—there’s plenty of room for him. Will you say yes, Janet, or shall we ask him to settle it for us?” said the miller. “Will you promise to marry me if he says yes?”

“I will,” said she.

And so they drove home together when the sun was getting low.

“Peter,” said the miller, “don’t you think it would be a good plan if I married Janet, and you were to come and live with me and learn to be a miller too? You should have cake for tea every other day, and a pair of fine blue trousers, and a whipping-top of your own, and a kite, and I’d tell you a new story every Sunday afternoon.”

Peter’s eyes grew round.

“And should I be all white with flour like your man?”

“From head to foot,” said the miller.

“Hooray! hooray! hooray!” shrieked little Peter, jumping about in the cart.

“Take care, take care,” cried Janet, “or you will make the horse run away.”

“That settles it,” observed the miller. “We’ll be married next week.”

And so they were.

BILLING AND SONS, LIMITED, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.

Illustrations have been relocated due to using a non-page layout.

[The end of Stories Told by the Miller by Violet Jacob]