There were however local legends of persons who lived within the mire itself, creatures that knew the two or three safe paths across the mud. Generally they were said to be mad people, for if not crazy to begin with, the gloom, vapours, and weird sights of the bog soon sent them that way. They dwelled in lopsided hovels perched upon the quag and made their soup from peculiar plants, ate frogs even, and perhaps godlessly worshipped the stars. Now and then tales were told of encounters on the moor with phantom phos­phorescent dogs and men who had webbed hands and feet, and mostly all the stories were as apocryphal as these. Nevertheless, it was true, Louisa lived with her aunt in a cottage on the mire and for nineteen years knew no other life. Her mother had died giving her birth, and her father perished some time before. The aunt took over the cottage and the baby and ruled both in her own individual style. It had happened that a traveller once penetrated the mire and came on the cottage—although whether he ever escaped from either is not known.
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