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The Widow made a story about her husband’s old nurse:

how the nurse’s grandfather’s grandmother had been born in the beginning days of the wide world, when the Virgin still moved among ordinary people and spoke to them. 

how that ancestor received from the the Virgin’s hand a Magic Mirror.

how she passed it down through her family until her family was no more than the nurse.

“Your father’s nurse bequeathed it to him. One day when you are old enough,” the Widow promised, “you may look into it. The Mirror will show you a face of the Devil.”