Read (5/20)Over the Gate for Free Online

Taking a tight grip with one hand, she groped inside the basket on her arm, found the brick and'cast it downward.
    It seemed to make the most appalling shindy and also jerked Sally cruelly round the waist. Breathless, shelistened. Supposing the neighbours were disturbed and looked out of their windows? Supposing the rope broke? Sally gripped the tree even more desperately in her agitation. But the silence engulfed her, and only the distant yelping of a stoat stirred the blackness, as a failing leaf might ruffle the satin smoothness of a still pool.
    Emboldened, Sally turned to her task. It was not easy, but it was wonderfully exhilarating to be at large in the tree tops and her basket was soon full. Weight returned to her in roughly half ail hour, and Sally crept back to the cottage, basket in one hand, brick in the other, and went, highly elated, to bed.

    Time passed. A pot of the mixture stood permanently on Sally's larder shelf and she began to take her ability to levitate almost for granted. She was wonderfully lucky in preserving her secret, although over the years she had one or two dangerous moments. One day, for example, she was cleaning her bedroom window inside, floating about eight inches above the rush matting, when her neighbour appeared on the garden path below her and asked if she might borrow some sugar.
    'I'll be down in a minute,' Sally replied, doing her best to keep her feet hidden from sight below the window sill.
    'Shall I take a cupful myself?' suggested the woman. 'Save you leaving the windows, like?'
    'No, no,' answered Sally, trying to sound airy, as indeed she felt. Til bring it round the minute I've finished.'
    If she gets in here, thought Sally frantically, she'll be upstairs in double quick time and I'm aloft here for a good five minutes yet. The woman watched her closely, as she undulated from one pane to the next.
    'What you standin' on, gal?' she asked suspiciously.
    'My little old stool,' responded Sally, tightening her hold on the curtain and concentrating her attention on one pane. 'Don't you trouble to wait,' she added hastily. Til be round in two shakes.'
    To her infinite relief the woman departed, but the incident left Sally severely shaken. It was several weeks before she dared to take another dose.
    Under cover of darkness she often repeated her first outdoor experiment and picked fruit for pies and puddings, jamming and bottling. On one occasion the landlord of'The Beetle and Wedge' had asked her curiously how she had picked her apple tree so clean, and she had said quickly that she had 'given it a good old shake' and the wind had done the rest. He seemed to believe her.
    One late October day, when Sally was almost sixty years of age, she gazed with a speculative eye upon her walnut tree. This was a lofty beauty, of great age, and heavy this year with magnificent nuts. Sally decided to lengthen her rope and to make an assault upon it.
    "Tis Thursday,' said Sally aloud, 'and they all be safely at market. By teatime it'll be dark enough to try.'
    She made her preparations and made her way to the tree as dusk began to fall. The neighbours' cottages were empty and would remain so for a full hour, as well she knew. What she had not reckoned with was a freshening wind and the enormous collie puppy which came from the farm.
    The brick lay at the foot of the tree, half hidden in wet grass. Higher than she had ever been before Sally plucked swiftly at the green walnuts, staining her fingers brown as the basket filled. The wind made things difficult, tugging at her skirts and lifting the boughs from her reach. It grew more boisterous each minute and Sally began to feel alarmed.
    'I'll be downright thankful when this lightness wears off,' she said to herself, clinging to a sturdy branch. At that moment she became conscious of a rhythmic tremor running up die rope. There, busily gnawing at it, just above the brick, was the collie puppy. Caution thrown to the winds, Sally screamed at him.
    'Be