THE WITCH.
It was a bright Autumn morning. A dry wind had been blowing all
night through the shocks, and already some of the farmers had begun
to carry to their barns the sheaves which had stood hopelessly
dripping the day before. Ere Richard reached the yard, he saw, over
the top of the wall, the first load of wheat-sheaves from the
harvest-field, standing at the door of the barn, and high-uplifted
thereon the figure of Faithful Stopchase, one of the men, a
well-known frequenter of puritan assemblies all the country round,
who was holding forth, and that with much freedom, in tones that
sounded very like vituperation, if not malediction, against some one
invisible. He soon found that the object of his wrath was a certain
Welshwoman, named Rees, by her neighbours considered objectionable
on the ground of witchcraft, against whom this much could with truth
be urged, that she was so far from thinking it disreputable, that
she took no pains to repudiate the imputation of it. Her dress, had
it been judged by eyes of our day, would have been against her, but
it was only old-fashioned, not even antiquated: common in Queen
Elizabeth's time, it lingered still in remote country places--a gown
of dark stuff, made with a long waist and short skirt over a huge
farthingale; a ruff which stuck up and out, high and far, from her
throat; and a conical Welsh hat invading the heavens. Stopchase,
having descried her in the yard, had taken the opportunity of
breaking out upon her in language as far removed from that of
conventional politeness as his puritanical principles would permit.
Doubtless he considered it a rebuking of Satan, but forgot that,
although one of the godly, he could hardly on that ground lay claim
to larger privilege in the use of bad language than the archangel
Michael. For the old woman, although too prudent to reply, she
scorned to flee, and stood regarding him fixedly. Richard sought to
interfere and check the torrent of abuse, but it had already
gathered so much head, that the man seemed even unaware of his
attempt. Presently, however, he began to quail in the midst of his
storming. The green eyes of the old woman, fixed upon him, seemed to
be slowly fascinating him. At length, in the very midst of a volley
of scriptural epithets, he fell suddenly silent, turned from her,
and, with the fork on which he had been leaning, began to pitch the
sheaves into the barn. The moment he turned his back, Goody Rees
turned hers, and walked slowly away.
She had scarcely reached the yard gate, however, before the cow-boy,
a delighted spectator and auditor of the affair, had loosed the
fierce watch-dog, which flew after her. Fortunately Richard saw what
took place, but the animal, which was generally chained up, did not
heed his recall, and the poor woman had already felt his teeth, when
Richard got him by the throat. She looked pale and frightened, but
kept her composure wonderfully, and when Richard, who was prejudiced
in her favour from having once heard Dorothy speak friendlily to
her, expressed his great annoyance that she should have been so
insulted on his father's premises, received his apologies with
dignity and good faith. He dragged the dog back, rechained him, and
was in the act of administering sound and righteous chastisement to
the cow-boy, when Stopchase staggered, tumbled off the cart, and
falling upon his head, lay motionless. Richard hurried to him, and
finding his neck twisted and his head bent to one side, concluded he
was killed. The woman who had accompanied him from the field stood
for a moment uttering loud cries, then, suddenly bethinking herself,
sped after the witch. Richard was soon satisfied he could do nothing
for him.
Presently the woman came running back, followed at a more leisurely
pace by Goody Rees, whose countenance was grave, and, even to the
twitch about her mouth, inscrutable. She walked up to where the man
lay, looked at him for a moment or two as if considering his case,
then sat down on the ground beside him, and requested Richard to
move him so that his head should lie on her lap. This done, she laid
hold of it, with a hand on each ear, and pulled at his neck, at the
same time turning his head in the right direction. There came a
snap, and the neck was straight. She then began to stroke it with
gentle yet firm hand. In a few moments he began to breathe. As soon
as she saw his chest move, she called for a wisp of hay, and having
shaped it a little, drew herself from under his head, substituting
the hay. Then rising without a word she walked from the yard.
Stopchase lay for a while, gradually coming to himself, then
scrambled all at once to his feet, and staggered to his pitchfork,
which lay where it had fallen. 'It is of the mercy of the Lord that
I fell not upon the prongs of the pitchfork,' he said, as he slowly
stooped and lifted it. He had no notion that he had lain more than a
few seconds; and of the return of Goody Rees and her ministrations
he knew nothing; while such an awe of herself and her influences had
she left behind her, that neither the woman nor the cow-boy ventured
to allude to her, and even Richard, influenced partly, no doubt, by
late reading, was more inclined to think than speak about her. For
the man himself, little knowing how close death had come to him, but
inwardly reproached because of his passionate outbreak, he firmly
believed that he had had a narrow escape from the net of the great
fowler, whose decoy the old woman was, commissioned not only to
cause his bodily death, but to work in him first such a frame of
mind as should render his soul the lawful prey of the enemy.