Now when Morven and Ruth were very young and they still lived in the grey granite house in Queen Street, there were some real fiercesome winters then up in the North East. Sometimes it was so cold there was ice on the inside of the window. Oh yes, Morven suffered from chillblains right enough, and she and her sister wore long woollen stockings and had a stone pig in their bed at night.
Now Morven and Ruth slept in the bedroom at the back of the house. A pretty little room it was with pink wallpaper stamped with roses and bluebirds. But there was a black shiny chimneypiece in that room. And at night the sighing and moaning of the wind in the chimney was an awful sound I can tell ye.
Very often Morven couldn't sleep because of it. Aye, the thing is a bird had fallen down the chimney once and brought down a great lot of stoor and soot into the room, fluttering about in a flap flying straight for the walls. Oh, it was a real commotion right enough. Well after that there was a black mark on the wallpaper where the bird had hit itself.
But Morven always used to say it wasn't a bird had made that mark. It was the Black Fox that lived in the chimney. And when they heard the wind in the chimney, Morven used to say it was the Black Fox calling to them. Aye, and she couldn't be persuaded otherwise.
