When Mistress Baxter was back on her feet, she was so weakened by her lying-in that she could not cleave a head or carry a bucket. Sarah Lowes, the daughter of an elder, was hired as a daily help. She was young and strong and willing, and Gibbie rejoiced in her arrival. Housecleaning was getting beyond him; he had his work cut out to feed the Dissidents in this lean time of year, when trout sulked under the stones, and kites and foxes were quicker after the grouse than he. At midnight he would blow the peats under the girdle-plate and make barley bannocks—fortunately, there was still a fair supply of meal in the meal chest. The noise of the baby’s wailing drifted through the house. It was a fretful little creature, always grizzling and lamenting its lot. Beline, and unexpectedly Titmuss, felt kindly toward it: Beline harped to it, Titmuss rocked the cradle. It only wailed the more. Malise and Barco complained that it was impossible to meditate through such caterwauling. They waited for a moment when the child was left alone, took it from its cradle, hurried to the kitchen, and shut it in the meal chest. They had barely resumed their meditations before a new uproar broke out. Mistress Baxter had found the cradle empty. She rushed up and down, calling and exclaiming, opening doors and banging them shut, slapping Margaret and Ezekiel out of her way. Sarah Lowes rushed beside her, declaring that the fairies must have taken the child. Gideon had not heard such a commotion since the day the hen flew up the kitchen chimney. He roused himself and went downstairs. His wife cast herself on his neck, crying out, ‘Minister, Minister, the fairies have stolen my baby!’ She paused to draw breath. He heard a faint wailing, like an echo of her screams. ‘Hush,’ he said. ‘You can’t have looked properly. I can hear it.’ ‘Aye, we can hear it well enough,’ said Sarah. ‘It’s crying overhead. It’s loath to go with them, poor innocent!’ Ellin, who had enough of the fun, gave Gideon a shove toward the meal chest. He lifted the lid. The child was half-buried in meal, sneezing and choking, but still with enough strength to bewail. He picked it up and looked at it. They were too late! The wizened, sharp-faced creature in his arms was a changeling, substituted for his own child.

He felt the weeping resentment of a man betrayed. He felt the fury of a man made a fool of. And reason stood up and told him that both resentment and fury were unjustified. He had only his own simpleton self to blame.