A brusque movement and a blush from Mistress Dorothy here stopped the graphic flow of his eloquence.

"Er—hem—!" he concluded more tamely, "I saw her quite plainly."

"More shame then on thee, master," retorted Dorothy, whose wrath was far from subsiding, "for thus gazing on the devil's work."

But the matter had become of far too great import to allow of feminine jealousies being taken into account.

"And I know," added an elderly matron with quaking voice, "that my sister Hannah's child caught sight of the witch outside her tent this morning, and forthwith fell into convulsions, the poor innocent lamb."

"She hath the evil eye, depend on it," quoth Dorothy decisively.

The men said nothing. They were sipping their ale in sullen silence, and looking to Matthew for further expressions of wisdom.

"Those evil spirits have oft a filthy countenance," ex[Pg 26]plained the shoemaker sententiously, "and no doubt 'twas they helped to convulse Mistress Hannah's child. Some have four faces—one in the usual place, another at the back of the head, and one looking out on either side; others appear with a tall and lean body and bellow like a bull."

[Pg 26]

"Hast seen them, Matthew?" came in awed whispers from those around.

"Nay! God and the Holy Virgin forbid!" protested Matthew fervently. "God forbid that I should enter their abode of evil. I should lose my soul."

There was a long, ominous silence, broken only by quickly muttered invocations to the saints and to Our Lady.

The men looked furtively at one another. The women clung together, not daring to utter a sound. Mistress Dorothy, all the boldness gone out of her little heart, was sobbing from sheer fright.

"Friends," said Matthew at last, as if with sudden resolution, "if that woman be possessed of the devil, what's to be done?"

There was no reply, but obviously they all understood one another, for each wore a shame-faced look all of a sudden, and dared not meet his neighbour's eye. But the danger was great. The devil in their midst would mean poisoned wells, the sweating sickness, some dire calamity for sure; 

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