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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..109b377 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #53109 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/53109) diff --git a/old/53109-0.txt b/old/53109-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index f4396ab..0000000 --- a/old/53109-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,11556 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Witch, by Mary Johnston - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: The Witch - -Author: Mary Johnston - -Release Date: September 21, 2016 [EBook #53109] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WITCH *** - - - - -Produced by Giovanni Fini, sp1nd and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE: - -—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected. - - - - -By Mary Johnston - - - HAGAR. - - THE LONG ROLL. The first of two books dealing with the war between the - States. With Illustrations in color by N. C. WYETH. - - CEASE FIRING. The second of two books dealing with the war between the - States. With Illustrations in color by N. C. WYETH. - - LEWIS RAND. With Illustrations in color by F. C. YOHN. - - AUDREY. With Illustrations in color by F. C. YOHN. - - PRISONERS OF HOPE. With Frontispiece. - - TO HAVE AND TO HOLD. With 8 Illustrations by HOWARD PYLE, E. B. - THOMPSON, A. W. BETTS, and EMLEN MCCONNELL. - - THE GODDESS OF REASON. _A Drama._ - - -HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY - -BOSTON AND NEW YORK - -[Illustration: - (p. 154) -“GOOD-BYE, MISTRESS FRIENDLY-SOUL!”] - - - - - THE WITCH - - BY - - MARY JOHNSTON - -[Illustration: LOGO] - - BOSTON AND NEW YORK - - HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY - - The Riverside Press Cambridge - - 1914 - - - - - COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY MARY JOHNSTON - - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - - _Published October 1914_ - - - - - CONTENTS - - - I. THE QUEEN’S CHAMBER 1 - - II. THE CAP AND BELLS 10 - - III. THE TWO PHYSICIANS 24 - - IV. THE ROSE TAVERN 37 - - V. THE ROAD TO HAWTHORN 54 - - VI. THE MAN WITH THE HAWK 69 - - VII. JOAN 82 - - VIII. THE SQUIRE’S BROTHER 97 - - IX. THE OAK GRANGE 109 - - X. IN HAWTHORN FOREST 124 - - XI. THE PLAGUE 136 - - XII. HERON’S COTTAGE 151 - - XIII. HAWTHORN CHURCH 165 - - XIV. NIGHT 176 - - XV. NEXT DAY 188 - - XVI. MASTER THOMAS CLEMENT 204 - - XVII. MOTHER SPURAWAY 218 - - XVIII. THE GAOL 235 - - XIX. ADERHOLD AND CARTHEW 246 - - XX. THE WITCH JUDGE 260 - - XXI. THE WITCH 272 - - XXII. ESCAPE 281 - - XXIII. THE ROAD TO THE PORT 298 - - XXIV. THE FARTHER ROAD 312 - - XXV. THE SILVER QUEEN 327 - - XXVI. THE OPEN BOAT 342 - - XXVII. THE ISLAND 351 - - XXVIII. FOUR YEARS 362 - - XXIX. THE SPANIARDS 376 - - XXX. THE ISLET 387 - - XXXI. THE HOUR-GLASS 404 - - XXXII. A JOURNEY 420 - - - - - THE WITCH - - - - - THE WITCH - - - - -CHAPTER I - -THE QUEEN’S CHAMBER - - -IT was said that the Queen was dying. She lay at Richmond, in the -palace looking out upon the wintry, wooded, March-shaken park, but -London, a few miles away, had daily news of how she did. There was -much talk about her--the old Queen—much telling of stories and -harking back. She had had a long reign—“Not far from fifty years, my -masters!”—and in it many important things had happened. The crowd in -the streets, the barge and wherry folk upon the wind-ruffled river, -the roisterers in the taverns drinking ale or sack, merchants and -citizens in general talking of the times in the intervals of business, -old soldiers and seamen ashore, all manner of folk, indeed, agreed -upon the one most important thing. The most important thing had been -the scattering of the Armada fifteen years before. That disposed of, -opinions differed as to the next most important. The old soldiers were -for all fighting wherever it had occurred. The seamen and returned -adventurers threw for the voyages of Drake and Frobisher and Gilbert -and Raleigh. With these were inclined to agree the great merchants -and guild-masters who were venturing in the East India and other -joint-stock companies. The little merchant and guild fellows agreed -with the great. A very large number of all classes claimed for the -overthrow of Popery the first place. On the other hand, a considerable -number either a little hurriedly slurred this, or else somewhat too -anxiously and earnestly supported the assertion. One circle, all -churchmen, lauded the Act of Uniformity, and the pains and penalties -provided alike for Popish recusant and non-conforming Protestant. -Another circle, men of a serious cast of countenance and of a growing -simplicity in dress, left the Act of Uniformity in obscurity, and -after the deliverance from the Pope, made the important happening the -support given the Protestant principle in France and the Netherlands. -A few extreme loyalists put in a claim for the number of conspiracies -unearthed and trampled into nothingness—Scottish conspiracies, Irish -conspiracies, Spanish conspiracies, Westmoreland and Northumberland -conspiracies, Throgmorton conspiracies—the death of the Queen of -Scots, the death, two years ago, of Essex. - -All agreed that the Queen had had a stirring reign—all but the latter -end of it. The last few years—despite Irish affairs—had been dull and -settled, a kind of ditch-water stagnation, a kind of going downhill. -Fifty years, almost, was a long time for one person to reign.... - -On a time the Queen had been an idol and a cynosure—for years -the love of a people had been warm about her. It had been a people -struggling to become a nation, beset with foreign foes and inner -dissensions, battling for a part in new worlds and realms. She had led -the people well, ruled well, come out with them into the Promised Land. -And now there was a very human dissatisfaction with the Promised Land, -for the streams did not run milk and honey nor were the sands golden. -As humanly, the dissatisfaction involved the old Queen. She could not -have been, after all, the Queen that they had thought her.... After -crying for so many years “Long live Queen Elizabeth!” there would come -creeping into mind a desire for novelty. _King James,—King James!_ The -words sounded well, and promised, perhaps, the true Golden Age. But -they were said, of course, under breath. The Queen was not dead yet. - -They told strange stories of her—the old Queen; usually in small, -select companies where there were none but safe men. As March roared -on, there was more and more of this story-telling, straws that showed -the way the tide was setting. They were rarely now stories of her -youth, of her courage and fire, of her learning, of the danger in which -she lived when she was only “Madam Elizabeth,” of her imprisonment -in the Tower—nor were they stories of her coronation, and of the -way, through so many long years, she had queened it, of her “mere -Englishness,” her steady courage, her power of work, her councillors, -her wars, and her statecraft. Leaving that plane, they were not so -often either stories of tragic errors, of wrath and jealousy, finesse -and deception, of arbitrary power, of the fret and weakness of the -strong.—But to-day they told stories of her amours, real or pretended. -They repeated what she had said to Leicester and Leicester had said to -her, what she had said to Alençon and Alençon had answered. They dug -up again with a greasy mind her girlhood relations with Seymour, they -created lovers for her and puffed every coquetry into a full-blown -_liaison_; here they made her this man’s mistress and that man’s -mistress, and there they said that she could be no man’s mistress. They -had stories to tell of her even now, old and sick as she was. They told -how, this winter, for all she was so ill at ease, she would be dressed -each day in stiff and gorgeous raiment, would lie upon her pillows so, -with rings upon her fingers and her face painted, and when a young man -entered the room, how she gathered strength.... - -The March wind roared down the streets and shook the tavern signs. - -In the palace at Richmond, there was a great room, and in the room -there was a great bed. The room had rich hangings, repeated about the -bed. The windows looked upon the wintry park, and under a huge, marble -mantelpiece, carved with tritons and wreaths of flowers, a fire burned. -About the room were standing women—maids of honour, tiring-women. -Near the fire stood a group of men, silent, in attendance. - -The Queen did not lie upon the bed—now she said that she could not -endure it, and now she said that it was her will to lie upon the -floor. They placed rich cushions and she lay among them at their feet, -her gaunt frame stretched upon cloth of gold and coloured silk. She -had upon her a long, rich gown, as full and rigid a thing as it was -possible to wear and yet recline. Her head was dressed with a tire of -false hair, a mass of red-gold; there was false colour upon her cheek -and lip. She kept a cup of gold beside her filled with wine and water -which at long intervals she put to her lips. Now she lay for hours very -still, with contracted brows, and now she turned from side to side, -seeking ease and finding none. Now there came a moan, and now a Tudor -oath. For the most part she lay still, only the fingers of one hand -moving upon the rim of the cup or measuring the cloth of gold beneath -her. Her sight was failing. She had not eaten, would not eat. She lay -still, supported upon fringed cushions, and the fire burned with a low -sound, and the March wind shook the windows. - -From the group of men by the fire stepped softly, not her customary -physician, but another of some note, called into association during -these last days. He crossed the floor with a velvet step and stood -beside the Queen. His body bent itself into a curve of deference, but -his eyes searched without reverence. She could not see him, he knew, -with any clearness. He was followed from the group by a grave and able -councillor. The two stood without speaking, looking down. The Queen lay -with closed eyes. Her fingers continued to stroke the cloth of gold; -from her thin, drawn lips, coloured cherry-red, came a halting murmur: -“_England—Scotland—Ireland—_” - -The two men glanced at each other, then the Queen’s councillor, -stepping back to the fire, spoke to a young man standing a little apart -from the main group. This man, too, crossed the floor with a noiseless -step and stood beside the physician. His eyes likewise searched with a -grave, professional interest. - -“_Navarre_,” went the low murmur at their feet. “_Navarre -and Orange.... No Pope, but I will have ritual still.... -England—Scotland—_” - -The Queen moaned and moved her body upon the cushions. She opened her -eyes. “Who’s standing there? God’s death—!” - -The physician knelt. “Madam, it is your poor physician. Will not Your -Grace take the draught now?” - -“No.—There’s some one else—” - -“Your Grace, it is a young physician—English—but who has studied -at Paris under the best scholar of Ambroise Paré. He is learned and -skilful. He came commended by the Duke of —-- to Sir Robert Cecil—” - -“God’s wounds!” cried the Queen in a thin, imperious voice. “Have I -not told you and Cecil, too, that there was no medicine and no doctor -who could do me good! Paré died, did he not? and you and your fellow -will die! All die. I have seen a many men and matters die—and I will -die, too, if it be my will!” - -She stared past him at the strange physician. “If he were Hippocrates -himself I would not have him! I do not like his looks. He is a dreamer -and born to be hanged.—Begone, both of you, and leave me at peace.” - -Her eyes closed. She turned upon the cushions. Her fingers began again -to move upon the rich stuff beneath her. “_England_—” - -The rejected aid or attempt to aid stepped, velvet-footed, backward -from the pallet. The physicians knew, and all in the room knew, that -the Queen could not now really envisage a new face. She might with -equal knowledge have said of the man from Paris, “He is a prince in -disguise and born to be crowned.” But though they knew this to be -true, the Queen had said the one thing and had not said the other, and -what she said had still great and authoritative weight of suggestion. -The younger physician, returning to his place a little apart alike -from the women attendants and from the group of courtiers, became the -recipient of glances of predetermined curiosity and misliking. Now, as -it happened, he really did have something the look of a dreamer—thin, -pale, and thoughtful-faced, with musing, questioning eyes. While -according to accepted canons it was not handsome, while, indeed, it -was somewhat strange, mobile, and elf-like, his countenance was in -reality not at all unpleasing. It showed kindliness no less than power -to think. But it was a face that was not usual.... He was fairly -young, tall and well-formed though exceedingly spare, well dressed -after the quiet and sober fashion of his calling. Of their own accord, -passing him hastily in corridor or street, the people in the room might -not have given him a thought. But now they saw that undoubtedly he -_was_ strange, perhaps even sinister of aspect. Each wished to be as -perspicacious as the Queen. - -But they did not think much about it, and as the newcomer, after a -reverence directed toward the Queen, presently withdrew with the older -physician,—who came gliding back without him,—and as he was seen -no more in the palace, they soon ceased to think about him at all. -He had been recommended by a great French lord to the favour of Sir -Robert Cecil. The latter, sending for him within a day or two, told -him bluntly that he did not seem fitted for the Court nor for Court -promotion. - -The March wind roared through London and over Merry England and around -Richmond park and hill. It shook the palace windows. Within, in the -great room with the great bed, the old Queen lay upon the floor with -pillows beneath her, with her brows drawn together above her hawk nose. -At intervals her mortal disease and lack of all comfort wrung a moan, -or she gave one of her old, impatient, round, mouth-filling oaths. For -the most part she lay quite silent, uneating, unsleeping, her fleshless -fingers keeping time against the rich cloth beneath her. Her women did -not love her as the women of Mary Stuart had loved that Queen. Year in -and year out, day in and day out, they had feared this Queen; now she -was almost past fearing. They took no care to tell her that the carmine -upon her face was not right, or that she had pushed the attire of hair -to one side, and that her own hair showed beneath and was grey. They -reasoned, perhaps with truth, that she might strike the one who told. -She lay in her rich garments upon the floor, and the fire burned with a -low sound beneath the wreathed tritons and she smoothed the gold cloth -with her fingers. “_England—Scotland—Ireland.... Mere English—... -The Pope down, but I’ll have the Bishops still—_” - - - - -CHAPTER II - -THE CAP AND BELLS - - -THE inn was small and snug, near Cheapside Cross, and resorted to by -men of an argumentative mind. The Mermaid Tavern, no great distance -away, had its poets and players, but the Cap and Bells was for -statesmen in their own thought alone, and for disputants upon such -trifles as the condition of Europe, the Pope, and the change in the -world wrought by Doctor Martin Luther. It was ill-luck, certainly, that -brought Gilbert Aderhold to such a place. - -When he lost hope of any help from Cecil, the evident first thing to -do upon returning from Richmond to London, was to change to lodgings -that were less dear,—indeed, to lodgings as little dear as possible. -His purse was running very low. He changed, with promptitude, to a -poor room in a poor house. It was cold at night and dreary, and his -eyes, tired with reading through much of the day, ached in the one -candlelight. He went out into the dark and windy street, saw the glow -from the windows and open door of the Cap and Bells, and trimmed his -course for the swinging sign, a draught of malmsey and jovial human -faces. - -In the tavern’s common room he found a seat upon the long bench that -ran around the wall. It was a desirable corner seat and it became -his only by virtue of its former occupant, a portly goldsmith, being -taken with a sudden dizziness, rising and leaving the place. Aderhold, -chancing to be standing within three feet, slipped into the corner. He -was near the fire and it warmed him gratefully. A drawer passing, he -ordered the malmsey, and when it was brought he rested the cup upon -the table before him. It was a long table, and toward the farther end -sat half a dozen men, drinking and talking. What with firelight and -candles the room was bright enough. It was warm, and at the moment of -Aderhold’s entrance, peaceable. He thought of a round of wild and noisy -taverns that he had tried one after the other, and, looking around him, -experienced a glow of self-congratulation. He wanted peace, he wanted -quiet; he had no love for the sudden brawls, for the candles knocked -out, and lives of peaceable men in danger that characterized the most -of such resorts. He sipped his wine, and after a few minutes of looking -about and finding that the cluster at the far end of the table was upon -a discussion of matters which did not interest him, he drew from his -breast the book he had been reading and fell to it again. As he read -always with a concentrated attention, he was presently oblivious of all -around. - -An arm in a puffed sleeve of blue cloth slashed with red, coming flat -against the book and smothering the page from sight, broke the spell -and brought him back to the Cap and Bells. He raised his chin from -his hand and his eyes from the book—or rather from the blue sleeve. -The wearer of this, a formidable, large man, an evident bully, with -a captious and rubicund face, frowned upon him from the seat he had -taken, at the foot of the table, just by his corner. The number of -drinkers and conversers had greatly increased. There was not now just -a handful at this especial table; they were a dozen or more. Moreover, -he found that for some reason their attention was upon him; they were -watching him; and he had a great and nervous dislike of being watched. -He became aware that there was a good deal of noise, coarse jests and -laughter, and some disputing. Yet they looked, for the most part, -substantial men, not the wild Trojans and slashswords that he sometimes -encountered. For all his physical trepidations he was a close and -accurate observer; roused now, he sent a couple of rapid glances the -length and breadth of the table. They reported disputatious merchants -and burgomasters, a wine-flushed three or four from the neighbouring -congeries of lawyers, a country esquire, some one who looked pompous -and authoritative like a petty magistrate, others less patent,—and the -owner of the arm still insolently stretched across his book. - -The latter now removed the arm. “So ho! Master Scholar, your -Condescension returns from the moon—after we’ve halloaed ourselves -hoarse! What devil of a book carried you aloft like that?” - -Aderhold decided to be as placating as possible. “It is, sir, the -‘Chirurgia Magna’ of Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim, called -Paracelsus.” - -The red and blue man was determined to bully. “The Cap and Bells has -under consideration the state of the Realm. The Cap and Bells has -addressed itself to you three times, requesting your opinion upon grave -matters. First you deign no answer at all, and finally you insult us -with trivialities! ’S death! are you an Englishman, sir?” - -“As English as you, sir,” answered Aderhold; “though, in truth, seeing -that I have lived abroad some years and am but lately returned, my -English manners may have somewhat rusted and become clownish. I crave -pardon of the worshipful company, and I shall not again read in its -presence.” - -A roisterer addressed him from halfway down the table. “We’ve got a -ruling—we that frequent the Cap and Bells. You’re a stranger—and a -strange-looking stranger, too, by your leave—and you must wipe out the -offense of your outlandishness! A bowl of sack for the company—you’ll -pay for a bowl of sack for the company?” - -The colour flooded Aderhold’s thin cheek. He had not enough in his -purse or anything like enough. To-morrow he expected—or hoped rather -than expected—to receive payment from the alderman whose wife, having -fallen ill before the very door of the house where he lodged, he had -attended and brought out from the presence of death. But to-morrow -was to-morrow, and to-night was to-night. He told the truth. “I am -a poor physician, my masters, who hath of late been set about with -misfortune—” - -The red and blue bully smote the table with his fist. - -“What a murrain is a man doing in the Cap and Bells who cannot pay for -sack? Poor physician, quotha! I’ve known a many physicians, but none so -poor as that—” - -One of the lawyers, a middle-aged, wiry man in black, raised his head. -“He says true. Come, brother, out with thy gold and silver!” - -“When I shall have paid,” said Aderhold, “for the malmsey I have drunk, -I shall not have fourpence in my purse.” - -“Pay for the sack,” said the lawyer, “and leave the malmsey go.” - -“Nay,” said Aderhold, “I owe for the malmsey.” - -The red and blue man burst forth again. “Oons! Would you have it that -you do not owe the sack? Call for the drink and a great bowl of it, -aye! If the host is out at the end, he can take his pay with a cudgel -or summon the watch! Physician, quotha? Now, as my name’s Anthony Mull, -he looks more to me like a black seminary priest!” - -Aderhold leaned back appalled. He wished himself in the windy street -or the gloom of his lodgings, or anywhere but here. Was it all to -begin again, the great weariness of trouble here and trouble there? -To thread and dodge and bend aside, only in the end to find himself -at bay, bright-eyed and fierce at last like any hunted animal—he -who wanted only peace and quiet, calm space to think in! He groaned -inwardly. “Ah, the most unlucky star!” There came to his help, somewhat -strangely, and, though none noticed it, upon the start as it were of -the red and blue bully’s closing words, the Inns of Court man who had -spoken before. He took his arms from the table and, turning, called -aloud, “William Host! William Host!” - -The host came—a stout man with a moon face. “Aye, sir? aye, Master -Carnock?” - -“William Host,” said Carnock, “it is known, even in that remnant of -Bœotia, the Mermaid Tavern, that thou ’rt the greatest lover of books -of all the Queen’s subjects—” - -The host assumed the look of the foolish-wise. “Nay, nay, I would not -say the greatest, Master Carnock! But ’tis known that I value a book—” - -“Then,” said the other, “here is a learned doctor with a no less -learned book.” Rising, he leaned halfway over the table and lifted -from before Aderhold the volume with which he had been engaged. “Lo! A -good-sized book and well made and clothed! Look you, now! Is’t worth -thy greatest bowl of sack, hot and sugared? It is—I see it by thine -eye of judicious appraisement! I applaud thy judgement!—I call it a -Solomon’s judgement.—Furnish the doctor with the sack and take the -book for payment!” - -Aderhold thrust out a long and eager arm. “Nay, sir! I value the book -greatly—” - -“If you are not a fool—” said the lawyer with asperity. - -But the physician had already drawn back his arm. He could be at times -what the world might call a fool, but his intelligence agreed that this -occasion did not warrant folly. He might somehow come up with the book -again; if the alderman paid, he might, indeed, come back to-morrow to -the Cap and Bells and recover it from the host. When the first starting -and shrinking from danger was over, he was quick and subtle enough in -moves of extrication. He had learned that in his case, or soon or late, -a certain desperate coolness might be expected to appear. Sometimes he -found it at one corner, sometimes at another; sometimes it only came -after long delay, after long agony and trembling; and sometimes it -slipped its hand into his immediately after the first recoil. Whenever -it came it brought, to his great relief, an inner detachment, much as -though he were a spectator, very safe in some gallery above. Up there, -so safe and cool, he could even see the humour in all things. Now he -addressed the company. “My masters, Cleopatra, when she would have -a costly drink, melted pearls in wine! The book there may be called -a jewel, for I prized it mightily. Will you swallow it dissolved in -sack? So I shall make amends, and all will be wiser for having drunk -understanding!” - -The idea appealed, the sack was ordered. But the red and blue bully was -bully still. Aderhold would have sat quiet in his corner, awaiting the -steaming stuff and planning to slip away as soon as might be after its -coming. At the other end of the table had arisen a wordy war over some -current city matter or other—so far as he was concerned the company -might seem to be placated and attention drawn. He was conscious that -the lawyer still watched him from the corner of his eye, but the rest -of the dozen indulged in their own wiseacre wrangling. All, that is, -but the red and blue bully. He still stared and swelled with animosity, -and presently broke forth again. “‘Physician’! It may be so, but I do -not believe it! As my name’s Anthony Mull, I believe you to be a Jesuit -spy—” - -The sack came at the moment and with it a diversion. Cups were filled, -all drank, and the lawyer flung upon the board for discussion the -growing use of tobacco, its merits and demerits. Then, with suddenness, -the petty magistrate at the head of the table was found to be relating -the pillorying that day, side by side, of a Popish recusant and a -railing Banbury man or Puritan. All at table turned out to be strong -Church of England men, zealous maintainers of the Act of Uniformity, -jealous of even a smack of deviation toward Pope or Calvin. At the -close of a moment of suspension, while all drank again, the red and -blue bully, leaning forward, addressed the man of justice. “Good Master -Pierce, regard this leech, so named, and put the question to him, will -he curse Popery and all its works.” - -It seemed, in truth, that this was Aderhold’s unlucky night. That, or -there was something in the Queen’s declaration, there was something -about him different, something that provoked in all these people -antagonism. And yet he was a quiet man, of a behaviour so careful that -it suggested a shyness or timidity beyond the ordinary. He was not -ill-looking or villainous-looking—but yet, there it was! For all that -he was indubitably of English birth, “_Foreigner_” was written upon him. - -The present unluckiness was the being again involved in this -contentious and noisy hour. He had been gathering himself together, -meaning to rise with the emptying of the bowl, make his bow to the -company, and quit the Cap and Bells. And now it seemed that he must -stop to assure them that he was not of the old religion! Aderhold’s -inner man might have faintly smiled. He felt the lawyer’s gaze upon -him—a curious, even an apprehensive, gaze. The justice put the -question portentously, all the table, save only the lawyer, leaning -forward, gloating for the answer, ready to dart a claw forward at the -least flinching. But Aderhold spoke soberly, with a quiet brow. “I -do not hold with cursing, Master Justice. It is idle to curse past, -present, or to come, for in all three a man but curses himself. But I -am far removed from that faith, and that belief is become a strange and -hostile one to me. I am no Papist.” - -The bully struck the table with his fist. “As my name’s Anthony Mull, -that’s not enough!” - -And the justice echoed him with an owl-like look: “That’s not enough!” - -A colour came into Aderhold’s cheek. “There is, my masters, no faith -that has not in some manner served the world and given voice to what -we were and are, good and bad. No faith without lives of beauty and -grace. No faith without its garland. But since I am to clear myself -of belonging to the old religion—then I will say that I abhor—as in -a portion of myself, diseased, which I would have as far otherwise -as I might—that I abhor in that faith all its cruelties past and -present, its Inquisition, its torturers and savage hate, its wars and -blood-letting and insensate strife, its falseness and cupidity and -great and unreasonable pride, its King Know-No-More and its Queen -Enquire-No-Further! I abhor its leasing bulls, its anathemas and -excommunications, its iron portcullis dropped across the outward and -onward road, its hand upon the throat of knowledge and its searing -irons against the eyes of vision! I say that it has made a dogma of -the childhood of the mind and that, or soon or late, there will stand -within its portals intellectual death—” - -The table blinked. “At least,” said the justice sagely, “you are no -Papist!” - -But the red and blue man would not be balked of his prey. “That’s round -enough, but little enough as a true Churchman talks! You appear to me -not one whit less one of us than you did before! Master Pierce, Master -Pierce! if he be not a masked Jesuit, then is he a Marprelate man, a -Banbury man, a snuffling, Puritan, holy brother! Examine him, Master -Pierce! My name is not Mull, if he be not somehow pillory fruit—” - -It seemed that they all hated a Puritan as much as a Papist. “Declare! -Declare! Are you a Banbury Saint and a Brother? Are you Reformed, a -Precisian, and a Presbyter? Are you John Calvin and John Knox?” - -But Aderhold kept a quiet forehead. “A brother to any in the sense you -mean—no. A saint—not I! A Calvinist?—No, I am no Calvinist.” - -“Not enough! Not enough!” - -Aderhold looked at them, bright-eyed. “Then I will say that Calvin -burned Servetus. I will say that where they have had power to persecute -they have persecuted! I will say that—” - -Outside the Cap and Bells arose a great uproar. Whether it were -apprentices fighting, or an issue of gentry and sword-play with—in -either case—the watch arriving, or whether it were a fire, or news, -perhaps, of the old Queen’s death—whatever it was it behooved the Cap -and Bells to know the worst! All the revellers and disputers rose, made -for the door, became dispersed. Aderhold snatched up his cloak and hat, -laid a coin beside the empty malmsey cup, sent one regretful glance in -the direction of the volume lying beside the great bowl, and quitted -the Cap and Bells. In the street was a glare of light and the noise -of running feet. The crowd appeared to be rushing toward Thames bank, -some tall building upon it being afire. He let them go, and drawing his -cloak about him, turned in the direction of his lodging. - -He had not gone far when he felt himself touched on the shoulder. “Not -so fast! A word with you, friend!—You’ve put me out of breath—” - -It proved to be the lawyer who had befriended him. They were standing -before some church. Wall and porch, it rose above them, dark and -vacant. The lawyer looked about him, glanced along the steps and into -the hollow of the porch. “Bare as is this land of grace!—Look you, -friend, we know that it is allowable at times to do that in danger -which we disavow in safety. Especially if we have great things in -trust.—I marked you quickly enough for a man with a secret—and a -secret more of the soul and mind than of worldly goods. Hark you! -I’m as little as you one of the mass-denying crew we’ve left. What! -a man may go in troublous times with the current and keep a still -tongue—nay, protest with his tongue that he loves the current—else -he’ll have a still tongue, indeed, and neither lands nor business, nor -perhaps bare life! But when we recognize a friend—” He spoke rapidly, -in a voice hardly above a whisper, a sentence or two further. - -“You take me,” said Aderhold, “to be Catholic. You mistake; I am not. -I spoke without mask.” Then, as the other drew back with an angry -breath. “You were quick and kindly and saved me from that which it -would have been disagreeable to experience. Will you let me say but -another word?” - -“Say on,” said the other thickly, “but had I known—” - -The light from Thames bank reddening the street even here, they drew a -little farther into the shadow of the porch. “I have travelled much,” -said Aderhold, “and seen many men and beliefs, and most often the -beliefs were strange to me, and I saw not how any could hold them. -Yet were the people much what they were themselves, some kindly, some -unkindly, some hateful, some filled with all helpfulness. I have seen -men of rare qualities, tender and honourable women and young children, -believe what to me were monstrous things. Everywhere I have seen that -men and women may be better than the dogma that is taught them, seeing -that what they think they believe is wrapped in all the rest of their -being which believes no such thing. Both in the old religion and in the -Reformed have I known many a heroic and love-worthy soul. Think as well -as you may of me, brother, and I will think well of thee—and thank -thee, besides,—” - -“Cease your heretic talk!” said the lawyer. “I held you to be of holy -Mother Church—” With suddenness, in the darkness, he put forth his -foot and swung his arm, at once tripping and striking the physician -with such violence that he came to the ground with his forehead against -the stone step of the church. When he staggered to his feet the lawyer -was gone. Around him howled the March wind and far above the church -vane creaked. He stood for a moment until the giddiness passed, then -gathered his cloak about him and, hurrying on through the nipping air, -reached his lodging without further adventure. - -That night he slept well. The next morning, as he was eating his -breakfast, that was spare enough, he heard a loud and formal crying -in the street below. He went to the window. A crier was approaching, -at his heels a mob of boys and of the idle generally. “_The Queen is -Dead!—The Queen is Dead!—The Queen is Dead!—Long Live King James!_” - - - - -CHAPTER III - -THE TWO PHYSICIANS - - -HE went that morning to visit the alderman, inopportune as he knew the -visit would be esteemed. But many things were inopportune—hunger, for -instance. The alderman found the visit offensively, unpatriotically -inopportune. “What! The King’s Majesty’s ascension day—!” But one -thing saved Aderhold, and that was the presence in the alderman’s -parlour of some seven or eight cronies, men and women. It would not -do—it would not do for the alderman to seem haggling and unwilling. -Aderhold quitted the house the richer by twelve shillings. - -The narrow streets were crowded; everybody was out, excited and -important as though he or she had died or been crowned. The physician -strolled with the others. The morning was fine, he felt wealthy and -happy. The sunshine that stroked the projecting, timbered fronts of -houses was the sunshine of home, the soft and moist light of England. -He loved England. He wandered for an hour or two here and there in -the London of less than two hundred thousand souls. He went down to -the riverside, and sat upon a stone step, and gazed into the purple, -brooding distance.... At last he turned back, and after a time found -himself in the street of his lodging, and before the house. - -It was a narrow, poor, and gloomy place, owned by people whom he -guessed to have fallen on evil days. The plainly dressed elderly woman -from whom he had hired his room had told him, indeed, as much. “Aye?” -said Aderhold. “Then, mother, I’ll feel the more at home.” He had -lodged here now ten days and he had seen only the elderly woman and her -son, a boy far gone in consumption who coughed and coughed. The woman -was a silent, rigid person, withered but erect, wearing a cap and over -her gown of dark stuff a coarse white kerchief and apron. This morning, -when she brought him his half loaf and tankard of ale, he had spoken -with casualness of the Cap and Bells. She looked at him strangely. “The -Cap and Bells!... Doubtless you heard good talk there.” Then had come -the crying about the Queen’s death. When he turned from the window the -woman was gone. - -Now he entered the house. As he laid his hand upon the stair-rail the -woman stood framed in a doorway. “Tarry a little,” she said. “I wish to -tell you that this house will lodge you no longer.” - -Aderhold stood still, then turned. “And why, good mother? I like my -room and the house. I have striven to be in no way troublesome.” He put -his hand in his purse and drew it forth with the alderman’s shillings -upon the palm. “You see I have money. You’ll not lose by me.” - -A voice came from the room behind the woman. “Let him enter, mother. We -would see this fellow who will make no trouble for us.” - -Aderhold noted a pale triumph in the woman’s strong, lined face and -in her tense, updrawn figure. “Aye, it happened to give thanks for!” -she told him. “Two things happened this morning. A King came to the -throne who, for all his mother’s scarlet and raging sins, has himself -been bred by godly men to godly ways! And my two sons came home from -overseas!” - -She turned and passed through the doorway into the room from which -she had come. Aderhold, after a moment of hesitation, followed. It -was a large, dark place, very cold and bare. Here, too, was a table, -drawn toward the middle of the room, with a cloth upon it and bread -and a piece of meat. Beside it, chair and stool pushed back, stood -two men—the returned sons Aderhold was at once aware. He had seen -before men like these men—English sectaries abroad, men who stood -with the Huguenots in France, and in the Low Countries fought Spain -and the Devil with the soldiers of Orange. Estranged or banished from -home, lonely and insular, fighting upon what they esteemed the Lord’s -side, in the place where they esteemed the fight to be hottest, they -exhibited small, small love and comradeship for those in whose cause -they fought. Only, truly, in conventicles, could they seem to warm to -people of another tongue and history. Ultra-zealous, more Calvin than -Calvin, trained to harshness in a frightful war, iron, fanatic, back -now they came to England, the most admirable soldiers and the most -uncharitable men! - -The two stood in their plain doublets, their great boots, their small -falling collars. They were tall and hard of aspect, the one bearded, -the other with a pale, clean-shaven, narrow, enthusiast’s face. The -home-keeping son also had risen from table. He stood beside his mother, -coughing and pressing a cloth to his lips. - -The bearded man spoke. “Good-morrow, friend!” - -“Good-morrow, friend,” answered Aderhold. - -“You spoke that,” said the bearded man, “as though you were indeed a -friend, whereas we know you to be but a Cap and Bells friend.” - -“I do not take your meaning,” said Aderhold. “I would be friends—no -man knows how I would be friends with men.” - -The shaven man spoke. “Thou hypocritical prelate’s man! Why did you let -slip to my mother that the Cap and Bells was your place of revelling -and roistering and blackening God to his face? As if, before we went -to the wars, the Cap and Bells was not known for what it was—yea, and -is! for my mother saith the leopard hath not changed his spots nor the -Ethiop his skin—a bishop-loving, stained-glass praising, Prayer-Book -upholding, sacrament kneeling, bowing, chanting, genuflecting, very -pillar and nest of prelacy! drinking-place of all they who, if they -had their wicked will, would give into the hand of ruin—yea, would -pillory and stock, yea, would put to the rack if they might, yea, -would give to the flame if they were strong enough!—the Lord’s chosen -people, sole fence between this land and the fate of the cities of the -plain!” - -“There have been before now,” said the bearded man, “spies sent among -the Lord’s people, and always such have been received and comforted in -that same house—to wit, the Cap and Bells!” - -The consumptive took the red cloth from his lips. “Mother, mother, did -I not say, when the man came, that he had a strange look?” - -“Aye, Andrew,” said the mother, “he went like a man with a guilty -load and watched his shadow.—But I had you to think on, and the need -for bread, and he paid me, which, God knoweth! they do not always do. -And it came not into my head, until, before he thought, he had said -the ‘Cap and Bells,’ that he might be here to spy and wring news of -us—cozening us to tell reportable tales of the Lord’s Saints!” She -stopped, then spoke on with a high, restrained passion and triumph. -“But now—but now I think that that is what he is! But now I am not -afraid—and now he may get his deserts—seeing that the new King is -surely for us, and that my sons have come home!” - -“The new King!” exclaimed the shaven man. “The new King is an old -Stuart! Lean upon that reed and it will pierce your hand! I tell that -to my brother and to you, mother, and you will not believe—” - -“Time will show,” said the bearded man impatiently. “Time will show -which of us is right. But to-day my mother can turn out this bishop’s -man, neck and crop! Yea, and if he murmurs—” - -He made a step forward, a big-boned, powerful man, grim of countenance. -His hand shot out toward the physician. - -Aderhold gave back a step, then recovered himself. “You are mistaken,” -he said. “I am no spy and I am no bishop’s man. Like you, I have been -from England. I return poor and seeking physician’s work. Desiring -lodging, I asked at this house as I had asked at others, and as -honestly as a man may. For the Cap and Bells, I knew naught of it nor -of its frequenters. I crossed its threshold but once, and so ill did -the place suit me that I am not like to go again. I tell you the plain -truth.” - -The woman and her sons regarded him fixedly. “What think you,” asked -the shaven man at last, abruptly and sternly, “of the law that maketh -it an offense for a man to worship his Creator after the dictates of -his own heart—yea, that would compel him to conform to practices which -his soul abhorreth?” - -“I think,” said Aderhold, “that it is an evil law.” - -“You say truth,” answered the shaven man. “Now tell me plainly. Believe -you in copes and stoles and altars and credence tables, in kneeling -at communion, in Prayer-Book and surplice and bowing when the name is -mentioned, in bishops and archbishops and pride of place before God?” - -Aderhold looked at him dreamily. The fear of physical injury, which -was the weakness that most beset him, was gone by. He had at times -a strange sense of expansion, accompanied by a differentiation and -deepening of light. The experience—he knew it to be inward, and -never steadfast, very fleeting—returned to him now. The room looked -world-wide, the four interlocutors tribes and peoples. “My mind does -not dwell overmuch,” he said, “upon matters such as these. They are -little matters. The wrong is that a man should be made to say they -are necessary and great matters, and, to avoid falseness, be made to -fight dwarfs as though they were giants.—I need no priest in cope or -surplice or especial dress when all that I am lifts in contemplation -and resolve. I need not kneel when All communes with All. No slave is -my soul. Would I pray, I can pray without book, and would I not, no -book held before my face hath power to pray for me. If I bowed my head -at each thought of the mystery that surrounds us, I would not with -overmuch frequency walk erect, for I think much and constantly of that -mystery. If I bow my head without thought—an idiot may do the same. As -for prelates and they who are called ‘spiritual princes’—I have seen -not one who is not a man-chosen master of a man-built house.” - -The woman spoke uncertainly. “If we have been mistaken in you, sir,—” - -“What you say has truth,” said the bearded man. “But it also has a -strangeness and rings not like our truth.... If you are a Brownist, -this house will have naught to do with you!” - -“I am not a Brownist,” said Aderhold wearily. The sense of space -widening off and intenser light was gone. Never yet had it stayed but -the fewest of moments, and, going, it threw life back upon itself.... - -But the second son, who had been standing with an abstracted and -distant look, started and spoke. “Let him alone, mother and my brother! -Whatever he be, he hath no ill-will nor guile—” He turned to the -table. “Are you hungry?” he asked. “Sit down and eat with us.” - -Aderhold dwelt in this house some days longer. He did not again see -the two sons; they had taken horse and ridden to visit some returned -comrade or officer in the country. The woman he saw, and sometimes -talked with, but she had ceased to be curious about him, and they -chiefly spoke of the consumptive boy. He was near death. The physician -could only give something that should make the nights pass more -swiftly, less painfully. - -He himself wished to see a physician, the physician to whom, as to -Cecil, he had been recommended by a great noble of France, but whom -he had not seen since that day in Richmond, after that hour in the -Queen’s chamber. He had gone to his house to enquire—he was yet out of -London, he would be home on such a day. Aderhold went then, but could -not see him; waited two days, and was again denied; went in another -three, and was admitted. The physician was alone, in a small room, and -his manner dry and cold. - -If Aderhold still nursed a hope it was a faint and failing one. Before -that day in Richmond the hope had been strong. This physician was a -skilled man and knew skill when he saw it—the great Frenchman had -written with a guarded enthusiasm, but yet with enthusiasm of what -Gilbert Aderhold might do—the London physician had let drop a hint -that he himself had thought at times of an assistant—if not that, he -could certainly speak a word in season in another quarter. Aderhold had -hoped—after Richmond he had hoped less strongly. Now he found that -hope was failing. What had happened? What always happened? - -The physician continued standing. The room opened upon a garden, and -outside the lattice window there showed a tender mist of budding tree -and shrub. “You were so good,” said Aderhold, “as to bid me come to you -upon your return.” - -“I wished,” said the physician, “to give all weight and recognition -to the commendation of the Duke of —--.” A grey cat came and rubbed -against his ankle. He stooped and lifting the creature to the table -beside him stood stroking it. “The commendation of great noblemen is -at times like their largesse. It often falls—through, of course, no -fault of theirs—before the stranger and the unworthy.” - -“If I be unworthy,” said Aderhold, “yet I am not strange to that -nobleman, nor, I think, unloved by him. He has been my good patron, -almost, I might dare to say, my friend.” - -“Aye?” said the physician. “It has come to Court ears, with other -French news, that the Duke is out of favour.... Moreover, a friend of -my own has lately returned from Paris where he had long resided. He is -a man of the world, with a great interest in life and a knowledge of -what is talked about, small things as well as great. He told me”—the -physician paused—“of _you_!” - -“Yes,” Aderhold said dully; “of me?” - -“He brought you in as a slight case, but typical, of what grows up -in the narrow strip between religious wars and factions, between -Leaguer and Huguenot—to wit, something that is neither Catholic nor -Protestant, which the Leaguer would burn and the Huguenot would flay! -He told me of your case and your trial and imprisonment, and how none -would help you, neither Papist nor Reformed, but only this one nobleman -whose child, it seems, you had healed, and even he could only help by -helping you forth from France.” The physician continued to draw his -hand over the grey fur. “I quarrel with that nobleman for considering -that an atheist might prosper here in England, and for deceivingly -writing to me only of his skill in all that pertained to his art! I -might,” said the physician, “have become involved in what discovery and -disfavour you may bring upon yourself in this realm!” - -“I am not,” said Aderhold, “an atheist. Sanction and authority and -restraint are within.” - -The other shrugged. “Oh, your fine distinctions!” He went to the window -and set it wider so that the whole green garden and white and rosy -branches of bloom seemed to come into the room. “I am not,” he said, -with his back to the lattice, “myself a theologian. By nature I am a -‘live and let live’ man. Peter, Luther, Calvin, Mohammed, and Abraham -each may have had his own knowledge of heaven and hell! I will not -quarrel with knowledge for being various. I am tolerant—I am tolerant, -Master Aderhold! But I hold with emphasis that you must not inculpate -others—no, you must not let the edge of your mantle of heresy touch -another! It were base ingratitude, for instance, were you—” - -“I have been careful,” said Aderhold, “to mention your name to no -one. I have led since seeing you a retired and soundless life. I am a -stranger in this city and none knows my life, nor feels an interest in -it.” - -The physician’s countenance showed relief. “I did not know of what -folly you might not have been capable!” He stroked the cat, moved a -few paces about the room and returned. “I regret that I can give you -no aid. Indeed, I must tell you plainly that I owe it to my family -and my patients and my place—which is no slight one—in the esteem of -this city, to refuse all association with a man who at any hour may -fall under suspicion and prosecution.” He paused. “I may say to you -once, and this once only, that I find your case a hard one. I certainly -advise you not to be stiff-necked, but living in the world to conform -to the world. Philosophize, if you choose, but inwardly, inwardly, man!” - -He spoke quite amiably, even genially. It was apparent that Aderhold -had taken his dismissal, that he was not going to beg or be -distressful. He considered through the open casement the height of the -sun. He could give the unfortunate man a minute or two longer. “Let us -speak a moment,” he said, “of our art. London is thronged with doctors. -I tell you truly that there is scant room for another, even were the -circumstances not as they are, and you were as like others as you are -unlike. However still a tongue you may keep,—and I think you may -betray yourself oftener than you think,—you will eventually be found -out.” He lifted his finger impressively. “Now the temper of the time -is religious and growing ever more so. The Italian and antique spirit -that I remember is going—is almost gone. We are all theologians and -damn the whole world outside of our particular ark. People of the old -faith, people of the established faith, people of the Presbytery—each -of the three detests and will persecute the remaining two. Right and -left suffer from the middle, which is in power, as the middle—and -the remaining other—would suffer were the right or left in power. -War, secret or open, war, war! and they only unite to plague a witch -or to run to earth and burn for heresy one like you who belongs not -to right nor left nor middle. The tolerant, humane, philosophic heart -dissents—but few, my friend, are tolerant and humane, too few, too -few! All this being so, I do not advise you to remain in London—no, I -should not, were you Galen himself!” - -Aderhold stood gazing at the garden without. There were thorn hedges -everywhere—across all paths. “I do not know,” he said, “where I should -go—” - -“My advice,” said his fellow physician, “would be to travel to some -smaller town that hath never received a whisper from France. And -now”—he rose—“and now I must bid you good-bye, for an important -personage expects me at this hour.” - - - - -CHAPTER IV - -THE ROSE TAVERN - - -THREE days after this conversation Gilbert Aderhold said good-bye -to the Puritan woman and her son, shouldered a stick with a bundle -at the end, and set his face toward the periphery of London and the -green country beyond. He had no money. The idea of asking his fellow -physician for a loan haunted him through one night, but when morning -came the ghost was laid. He strongly doubted if the other would make -the loan and he did not wish to ask it anyhow. Since he had been in -London he had given a cast of his art more than once or twice in this -neighbourhood. But it was a poor neighbourhood, and those whom he had -served had been piteous folk, and he did not think that they could -pay. He had not asked them to pay. He had no connections in London, -no friends. His knowledge of men told him that, for all his tolerance -and humanity, the fellow physician might be expected to drop a word -of warning, here and there, among the brotherhood. His hope had been -that his case was so obscure that no talk would come from Paris.... It -was not only that the arm of religion had been raised; he had invoked -in medicine, too, strange gods of observation and experience; he had -been hounded forth with a double cry. To linger in London, to try to -work and earn here—with a shudder he tasted beforehand the rebuff that -might come. He would leave London. - -He was without near kindred. His parents were dead, a sister also. -There was an elder brother, a sea-captain. Aderhold had not seen him -for years, and fancied him now somewhere upon the ocean or adventuring -in the New World. He remembered his mother telling him that there were -or had been cousins to the north. She had spoken of an elderly man, -living somewhere in a Grange. The name was Hardwick, not Aderhold.... -He had no defined idea or intention of seeking kinsmen, but eventually -he turned his face toward the north. - -It was six in the morning when he stepped forth. Slung beside his -bundle of clothing and a book or two, wrapped in a clean cloth, was a -great loaf of bread which the Puritan woman had given him. There was -a divine, bright sweetness and freshness in the air and the pale-blue -heaven over all. He turned into Fleet Street and walked westward. The -apprentices were opening the shops, country wares were coming into -town, the city was beginning to bustle. Aderhold walked, looking to -right and left, interested in all. He was not a very young man, but he -was young. Health and strength had been rudely shaken by anxiety, fear, -and misery. Anxiety still hovered, and now and then a swift, upstarting -fear cut him like a whip and left him quivering. But fear and anxiety -were going further, weakening, toning down. Calm was returning, calm -and rainbow lights. - -Hereabouts in the street were all manner of small shops, places of -entertainment, devices by which to catch money. The apprentices were -beginning their monotonous crying, “What d’ye lack? What d’ye lack?” - -He came to a booth where there was a raree show. A shock-headed, ragged -youth was taking down the boards, which were painted with figures -of Indians, copper-hued and feathered. Half a dozen children stood -watching. - -Aderhold stopped and watched also. “Have you an Indian here,” he asked -the boy. “I have never seen one.” - -The youth nodded. “He sleeps in the corner back of the curtain. You pay -twopence to see him—” He grinned, and looked at the children. “But -it’s before hours, and if so be you won’t tell master on me—” - -“We won’t, master, we won’t!” chorused the children. - -The boy took down the last board, showing a concave much like a den -with a black curtain at the back. He whistled and the curtain stirred. -“We got him,” said the boy, “from two Spaniards who got him from a ship -from Florida. They trained him. They had a bear, too, that we bought, -but the bear died.” He whistled again. The curtain parted and the -Indian came forth and sat upon a stool planted in the middle of the den. - -It was evident that he had been “trained.” Almost naked, gaunt, dull -and hopeless, he sat with a lack-lustre eye. The boy whistled again -and he spoke, a guttural and lifeless string of words. The children -gathered close, flushed and excited. But Aderhold’s brows drew upward -and together and he turned a little sick. He was a physician; he was -used to seeing wretchedness, but it had not deadened him. Every now and -then the wave of human misery came and went over him, high as space, -ineffably dreary, unutterably hopeless.... He stood and looked at the -Indian for a few moments, then, facing from the booth, walked away with -a rapid and disturbed step which gradually became slower and halted. He -turned and went back. “Has he eaten this morning? You don’t give him -much to eat?” - -“Times are hard,” said the boy. - -Aderhold took the smaller bundle from his stick, unwrapped it and with -his knife cut from the loaf a third of its mass. “May I give him this?” - -The boy stared. “If you choose, master.” - -The physician entered the booth, went up to the Indian and placed the -bread upon his knee. “Woe are we,” he said, “that can give no efficient -help!” - -The savage and the European looked each other in the eyes. For a -moment something hawk-like, eagle-like, came back and glanced through -the pupils of the red man, then it sank and fled. His eyes grew dull -again, though he made a guttural sound and his hand closed upon the -bread. The physician stood a moment longer. He had strongly the sacred -wonder and curiosity, the mother of knowledge, and he had truly been -interested to behold an Indian. Now he beheld one—but the iron showed -more than the soul. “I am sorry for thee, my brother,” Aderhold said -softly. - -The boy spoke from without. “Hist, hist! Master’s coming down the -street.” - -Aderhold left the booth, shouldered his stick and bundle and went on -his way. - -He walked steadily, the sun at his back, lifting through the mist -and at last gilding the whole city. He was now upon its northwestern -fringe, in the “suburbs.” They had an evil name, and he was willing to -pass through them hurriedly. They had a sinister look,—net-work of -foul lanes, low, wooden, squinting houses, base taverns that leered. - -A woman came and walked beside him, paint on her cheeks. - -“Where are you going, my bonny man?” Then, as he would have outstepped -her, “What haste? Lord! what haste?” - -“I have a long way to go,” said Aderhold. - -“As long and as short as I have to go,” said the woman. “If you are -willing we might go together.” - -Aderhold walked on, “I am not for that gear, mistress.” - -“No?” said the woman. “Then for what gear are you?... Perhaps I am not -for it, either, but—Lord God! one must eat!” She began to sing in a -cracked voice but vaguely sweet. - - “A lass there dwelled in London town— - ‘Alas!’ she said, ‘Alas!’ she said, - ‘Of gold and land - I’ve none in hand—’” - -They were coming flush with the opening of a small, dim courtyard. She -broke off her song. “Bring your stick and bundle in front of you! This -is a marked place for snatchers.” - -Her warning was not idle. As he shifted the stick a shaggy, bull-headed -man made a move from shadow to sunlight, lurched against him and -grasped at the bundle. Aderhold slipping aside, the fellow lost his -balance and came almost to the ground. The woman laughed. Enraged, -the bull-headed man drew a knife and made at the physician, but the -woman, coming swiftly under his raised arm, turned, and grasping wrist -and hand, gave so sudden a wrench that the knife clanked down upon -the stones. She kicked it aside into the gutter, her face turned to -Aderhold. “Be off, my bonny man!” she advised. “No, he’ll not hurt me! -We’re old friends.” - -Aderhold left the suburbs behind, left London behind. He was on an -old road, leading north. For the most part, during the next few days, -he kept to this road, though sometimes he took roughly paralleling, -less-frequented ways, and sometimes footpaths through fields and -woods. Now he walked briskly, enjoying the air, hopeful with the -hopeful day. Sometime in the morning an empty cart overtook him, the -carter walking by his horse. They walked together up a hill and talked -of the earth and the planting and the carting of stuffs and the rates -paid and the ways of horses. Level ground reached, the carter offered a -lift, and the two travelled some miles together, chiefly in a friendly -silence. At midday Aderhold unwrapped his loaf of bread, and the carter -produced bread, too, and a bit of cheese and a jug containing ale. -They ate and drank, jogging along by April hedges and budding trees. A -little later the carter must turn aside to some farm, and, wishing each -other well, they parted. - -This day and the next Aderhold walked, by green country and Tudor -village and town, by smithy and mill, by country houses set deep -in giant trees, by hamlet and tavern, along stretches of lonely -road and through whispering, yet unvanished forests. The sun shone, -the birds sang, the air was a ripple of zephyrs. The road had its -traffic, ran an unwinding ribbon of spectacle. There were the walls -of country and the roof of sky and a staccato presence of brute and -human life. Now horsemen went by—knightly travel or merchant travel, -or a judge or lawyer, or a high ecclesiastic. Serving-men walked or -rode, farming folk, a nondescript of trade or leisure. Drovers came -by with cattle, country wains, dogs. A pedlar with his pack kept him -company for a while. Country women passed, carrying butter and eggs -to market, children coming from school, three young girls, lithe, -with linked arms, a parson and his clerk, an old seaman, a beggar, a -charcoal-burner, a curious small troupe of mummers and mountebanks, and -for contrast three or four mounted men somewhat of the stripe of the -widow’s sons. One looked a country gentleman and another a minister of -the stricter sort. They gazed austerely at the mummers as they passed. -Now life flowed in quantity upon the road, now the stream dwindled, now -for long distances there was but the life of the dust, tree and plant, -and the air. - -When the second sunset came he was between hedged fields in a quiet, -solitary country of tall trees, with swallows circling overhead in a -sky all golden like the halos around saints’ heads in pictures that he -remembered in Italy. No house was visible, nor, had one been so, had -he made up his mind to ask the night’s lodging. The day had been warm, -even the light airs had sunk away, the twilight was balm and stillness. -He possessed a good cloak, wide and warm. With the fading of the gold -from the sky he turned aside from the road upon which, up and down -as far as he could see, nothing now moved, broke through the hedge, -found an angle and spread his cloak within its two walls of shelter. -The cloak was wide enough to lie upon and cover with, his bundle made -a pillow. The stars came out; in some neighbouring, marshy place the -frogs began their choiring. - -Although he was tired enough, he could not sleep at once, nor even -after a moderate time of lying there, in his ears the monotonous, -not unmusical sound. He thought of what he should do to-morrow, and -he could not tell. Walk on? Yes. How far, and where should he stop? -So far he had not begged, but that could not last. The colour came -into his cheek. He did not wish to beg. And were there no pride in -the matter, there was the law of the land. Beggars and vagabonds and -masterless men, how hardly were they dealt with! They were dealt with -savagely, and few asked what was the reason or where was the fault. -_Work._ Yes, he would work, but how and where? Dimly he had thought all -along of stopping at last in some town or village, of some merciful -opportunity floating to him, of tarrying, staying there—finding room -somewhere—his skill shown—some accident, perhaps, some case like the -alderman’s wife ... a foothold, a place to grip with the hand, then -little by little to build up. Quiet work, good work, people to trust -him, assurance, a cranny of peace at last ... and all the time the -light growing. But where was the cranny, and how would he find the way -to it? - -Over him shone the Sickle. He lay and wondered, and at last he slept, -with the Serpent rising in the east. - -Late in the night, waking for a moment, he saw that the sky was -overcast. The air, too, was colder. He wrapped the cloak more closely -about him and slept again. When he woke the day was here, but not such -a day as yesterday. The clouds hung grey and threatening, the wind blew -chill. There set in a day of weariness and crosses. It passed somehow. -Footsore, at dusk, he knocked at a cotter’s door, closed fast against -the wind which was high. When the family questioned him, he told -them that he was a poor physician, come from overseas, going toward -kinspeople. There chanced to be a sick child in the cottage; they let -him stay for reading her fever and telling them what to do. - -The next day and the next and the next the sky was greyer yet, and the -wind still blew. It carried with it flakes of snow. The road stretched -bare, none fared abroad who could stay indoors. Aderhold now stumbled -as he walked. There was a humming in his ears. In the early afternoon -of his sixth day from London he came to as lonely a strip of country as -he had seen, lonely and grey and furrowed and planted with a gnarled -wood. The flakes were coming down thickly. - -Then, suddenly, beyond a turn of the road, he saw a small inn, set in a -courtyard among trees. As he came nearer he could tell the sign—a red -rose on a black ground. It was a low-built house with a thatched roof, -and firelight glowed through the window. The physician had a bleeding -foot; he was cold, cold, and dizzy with fatigue. He had no money, -and the inn did not look charitable. In the last town he had passed -through he had bought food and the night’s lodging with a portion of -the contents of his bundle. Now he sat down upon the root of a tree -overhanging the road, opened his shrunken store, and considered that -with most of what was left he might perhaps purchase lodging and fare -until the sky cleared and his strength came back. A while before he had -passed one on the road who told him that some miles ahead was a fairly -large town. He might press on to that ... but he was tired, horribly -tired, and shivering with the cold. In the end, keeping the bundle in -his hand, he went and knocked at the door of the Rose Tavern. - -The blowsed servant wench who answered finally brought her master the -host, a smooth, glib man with a watery eye. He looked at the stuff -Aderhold offered in payment and looked at the balance of the bundle. -In the end, he gestured Aderhold into the house. It was warm within -and fairly clean with a brightness of scrubbed pannikins, and in the -kitchen, opening from the chief room, a vision of flitches of bacon and -strings of onions hanging from the rafters. Besides the serving-maid -and a serving-man there was the hostess, a giant of a woman with a red -kerchief about her head. She gave Aderhold food. When it was eaten he -stretched himself upon the settle by the kitchen hearth, arms beneath -his head. The firelight danced on the walls, there was warmth and -rest.... - -Aderhold lay and slept. Hours passed. Then, as the day drew toward -evening, he half roused, but lay still upon the settle, in the brown -warmth. There was a feeling about him of peace and deep forests, of -lapping waves, of stars that rose and travelled to their meridians -and sank, of long, slow movements of the mind. The minutes passed. -He started full awake with the hearing of horses trampling into the -courtyard and a babel of voices. He sat up, and the serving-wench -coming at the moment into the kitchen he asked her a question. She -proved a garrulous soul who told all she knew. The Rose Tavern stood -some miles from a good-sized town. Those in the yard and entering -the house were several well-to-do merchants and others with their -serving-men. They had been to London, travelling together for company, -and were now returning to this town. There was with them Master—she -couldn’t think of his name—of Sack Hall in the next county. And -coming in at the same time, and from London, too, there was old Master -Hardwick who lived the other side of Hawthorn village, in a ruined old -house, and was a miser. If _he_ had been to London it would be sure to -have been about money. And finally there was Squire Carthew’s brother, -also from Hawthorn way. He was a fine young man, but very strict and -religious. The company wasn’t going to stay—it wished food and hot -drink and to go on, wanting to reach the town before night. And here -the hostess descended upon the girl and rated her fiercely for an idle, -loose-tongue gabbling wench— - -Aderhold, rested, rose from the settle and went into the greater room. -Here were the seven or eight principal travellers—the serving-men -being without, busy with the riding and sumpter horses. All in the room -were cold, demanding warmth and drink,—peremptory, authoritative, -well-to-do burghers of a town too large for village manners and not -large enough for a wide urbanity. In a corner, on a bed made of a bench -and stool, with a furred mantle for cover, lay a lean old man with a -grey beard. He was breathing thick and hard, and now and again he gave -a deep groan. A young serving-man stood beside him, but with a dull and -helpless aspect toward sickness. Across the room, standing by a window, -appeared a man of a type unlike the others in the room. Tall and -well-made, he had a handsome face, but with a strange expression as of -warring elements. There showed a suppressed passionateness, and there -showed a growing austerity. His dress was good, but dark and plain. He -was booted and cloaked, and his hat which he kept upon his head was -plain and wide-brimmed. Aderhold, glancing toward him, saw, he thought, -one of the lesser gentry, with strong Puritan leanings. This would be -“Squire Carthew’s brother.” - -As he looked, the serving-man left the greybeard stretched upon the -bench, went across to the window, and, cap in hand, spoke a few words. -The man addressed listened, then strode over to the chimney-corner and -stood towering above the sick man. “Are you so ill, Master Hardwick? -Bear up, until you can reach the town and a leech!” - -Aderhold, who had not left the doorway, moved farther into the room. -Full in the middle of it, a man who had had his back to him swung -around. He encountered one whom he had encountered before—to wit, -the red and blue bully of the Cap and Bells. Master Anthony Mull did -not at first recognize him. He was blustering against the host of the -Rose because there was no pasty in the house. The physician would fain -have slipped past, but the other suddenly gave a start and put out a -pouncing hand. “Ha, I know you! You’re the black sorcerer and devil’s -friend at the Cap and Bells who turned a book into a bowl of sack!” - -He had a great hectoring voice. The travellers in the room, all except -the group in the corner, turned their heads and stared. Aderhold, -attempting to pass, made a gesture of denial and repulsion. “Ha! -Look at him!” cried Master Anthony Mull. “He makes astrologer’s -signs—warlock’s signs! Look if he doesn’t bring a fiend’s own storm -upon us ere we get to town!” - -Very quiet, kindly, not easily angered, Aderhold could feel white wrath -rise within him. He felt it now—felt a hatred of the red and blue -man. The most of those in the room were listening. It came to him with -bitterness that this bully and liar with his handful of idle words -might be making it difficult for him to tarry, to fall into place if -any place invited, in the town ahead. He had had some such idea. They -said it was a fair town, with some learning.... - -He clenched his hands and pressed his lips together. To answer in words -was alike futile and dangerous; instead, with a shake of the head, -he pushed by the red and blue man. The other might have followed and -continued the baiting, but some further and unexpected dilatoriness -exhibited by the Rose Tavern fanned his temper into conflagration. He -joined the more peppery of the merchants in a general denouncement -and prophecy of midnight ere they reached the town. Aderhold, as far -from him as he could get, put under the surge of anger and alarm. He -stood debating within himself the propriety of leaving the inn at once, -before Master Mull could make further mischief. The cold twilight and -the empty road without were to be preferred to accusations, in this -age, of any difference in plane. - -The sick man near him gave a deep groan, struggled to a sitting -posture, then fell to one side in a fit or swoon, his head striking -against the wall. The young serving-man uttered an exclamation of -distress and helplessness. The man with the plain hat, who had turned -away, wheeled and came back with knitted brows. There was some -commotion in the room among those who had noticed the matter, but yet -no great amount. The old man seemed unknown to some and to others known -unfavourably. - -Aderhold crossed to the bench and bending over the sufferer proceeded -to loosen his ruff and shirt. “Give him air,” he said, and then to the -tall man, “I am a physician.” - -They laid Master Hardwick upon a bed in an inner room, where, Aderhold -doing for him what he might, he presently revived. He stared about him. -“Where am I? Am I at the Oak Grange? I thought I was on the road from -London. Where is Will, my man?” - -“He is without,” said Aderhold. “Do you want him? I am a physician.” - -Master Hardwick lay and stared at him. “No, no! You are a leech? Stay -with me.... Am I going to die?” - -“No. But you do not well to travel too far abroad nor to place yourself -where you will meet great fatigues.” - -The other groaned. “It was this one only time. I had monies at stake -and none to straighten matters out but myself.” He lay for a time with -closed eyes, then opened them again upon Aderhold. “I must get on—I -must get home—I must get at least as far as the town to-night. Don’t -you think that I can travel?” - -“Yes, if you go carefully,” said Aderhold. “I will tell your man what -to do—” - -The old man groaned. “He works well at what he knows, but he knows so -little.... I do not know if I will get home alive.” - -“How far beyond the town have you to go?” - -“Eight miles and more.... Doctor, are you not travelling, too? You’ve -done me good—and if I were taken again—” He groaned. “I’m a poor -man,—they make a great mistake when they say I’m rich,—but if you’ll -ride with me I’ll pay somehow—” - -Aderhold sat in silence, revolving the matter in his mind. “I have,” he -said at last, “no horse.” - -But Master Hardwick had with him a sumpter horse. “Will can now ride -that and now walk. You may have Will’s horse.” He saw the long miles, -cold and dark, before him and grew eager. “I’m a sick man and I must -get home.” He raised himself upon the bed. “You go with me—you’ve got -a kindly look—you do not seem strange to me. What is your name?” - -“My name is Gilbert Aderhold.” - -“Aderhold!” said Master Hardwick. “My mother’s mother was an Aderhold.” - - - - -CHAPTER V - -THE ROAD TO HAWTHORN - - -IT was full dusk when the London travellers did at last win away from -the Rose Tavern. The evening was cold, the snow yet falling in slow, -infrequent flakes. The merchants and their men, together with Master -Anthony Mull, first took the road. Then followed Master Harry Carthew, -straight and stern, upon a great roan mare. In the rear came on -slowly old John Hardwick, his servant Will, and the physician Gilbert -Aderhold. These three soon lost sight of the others, who, pushing on, -came to the town, rest, and bed, ere they had made half the distance. - -At last, very late, the place loomed before them. They passed through -dark and winding streets, and found an inn which Master Hardwick knew. -Together Will and Aderhold lifted the old man from his horse and helped -him into the house and into a great bed, where he lay groaning through -the night, the physician beside him speaking now and again a soothing -and steadying word. - -He could not travel the next day or the next. Finally Aderhold and Will -wrung permission to hire a litter and two mules. On the third morning -they placed Master Hardwick in the litter and all took the street -leading to the road which should bring them in the afternoon to the -Oak Grange. Going, they passed a second inn, and here Master Harry -Carthew suddenly appeared beside them upon his great roan. It seemed -that affairs had kept him likewise in this town, but that now he was -bound in their direction. - -The snow had passed into rain. The weather had moderated, the rain -ceased, and this morning there was pure blue sky and divine sunlight. -The latter bathed the unpaved streets, the timbered, projecting fronts -of houses, guildhall and shops and marketplace, and the tower and body -of a great and ancient abbey church. Beyond the church the ground -sloped steeply to the river winding by beneath an arched bridge of -stone. Above the town, commanding all, rose a castle, half-ruinous, -half in repair. The streets were filled with people, cheerful in the -morning air. Litter, mules, and horsemen moved slowly along. Honest -Will drew a long breath. “Fegs! Who would live in the country that -could live in a town?” - -Aderhold was riding beside him, Carthew being ahead on his great roan -mare. “Tell me something,” said the physician, “of the country to which -we are going.” - -“The country’s a good country enough,” said Will. “But the Oak -Grange—Lord! the Grange is doleful and lonely—” - -“Doleful and lonely?” - -“It’s all buried in black trees,” said Will, “and nobody lives there -but our old master.” - -“Where does Master Carthew live?” - -“He lives in the squire’s house beyond the village. He’s the squire’s -brother.” - -“You’re near a village?” - -“Aye, the village of Hawthorn.” - -They rode on, Will gazing busily about him. They were still in the -town, indeed in an important part of it, for before them rose the -prison. Without it stood pillory and stocks, two men by the legs in -the latter, a dozen children deliberately pelting them with rotten -vegetables, shards, and mud. Aderhold stared with a frown, the -countryman with a curious mixture of interest in the event and lumpish -indifference as to the nature of it. “Aye,” he repeated, “the village -of Hawthorn.” - -“Is there,” asked Aderhold, “a physician in the village?” - -They had passed the prison, and were approaching the sculptured portal -of the great church. “A physician?” said Will. “No. There was one, -but he died two years ago. Now they send here, or the schoolmaster -will bleed at a pinch or give a drench. And sometimes they go—but the -parson would stop that—to old Mother Spuraway.” - -They were now full before the great portal of the church. Carthew, -ahead, stopped his horse to speak to some person who seemed an -acquaintance. His halting in the narrow way halted the mules with the -litter. Master Hardwick had fallen into a doze. The physician and -serving-man, standing their horses together, looked up at the huge -pile of the church, towering like a cliff immediately above them. On -each side of the vast arched doorway had stood in niches the figures -of saints. These were broken and gone—dragged down in the day when -the neighbouring abbey was closed. But around and about, overhead and -flanking the cavernous entrance, had been left certain carvings—a -train of them—imps and devils and woe-begone folk possessed by the -foul fiend. The fiend grinned over the shoulder of one like a monkey, -he tugged like a wolf at the ear of another, he crept like a mouse -from a woman’s mouth.... Aderhold’s gaze was upon the great tower -against the sky and the rose-window out of which the stained glass was -not yet broken. But Will looked lower. Something presently causing -the physician to glance his way, he was startled at the serving-man’s -posture and expression. It was as though he had never seen these stone -figures before—and, indeed, it proved that he had never been so -closely within the porch, and that, in short, they had never so caught -his attention. He was staring at them now as though his eyeballs and -all imagination behind them were fastened by invisible wires to the -grotesque and horrible carvings. Into his countenance came a creeping -terror and a kind of fearful exaltation. Aderhold knew the look—he -had seen it before, in France and elsewhere, upon peasant faces and -upon faces that were not those of peasants. It was not an unusual look -in his century. Again, for the millionth time, imagination had been -seized and concentrated upon the Satanic and was creating a universe to -command. Will shivered, then he put his hand to his ear. - -“There is nothing there,” said the physician, “but your ear itself.” - -“Mice never come out of men’s mouths,” said Will. The physician knew -the voice, too, the dry-throated, rigid-tongued monotone. “The comfort -is that most of the wicked are women.” - -“Then take comfort,” said Aderhold, “and come away. Those figures are -but the imagination of men like yourself.” - -But Will was not ready to budge. “Twelfth night, I was going through -the fields. They were white with snow. Something black ran across and -howled and snapped at me.” - -“A famished wolf,” said Aderhold. - -“Aye, it looked like a wolf. But this is what proved it wasn’t,” said -Will. “That night in Hawthorn Forest Jock the forester set a trap. In -the night-time he heard it click down on the wolf and the wolf howl. He -said, says he, ‘I’ve got you now, old demon!’ and went back to sleep. -But at dawn, when he went to the trap, there was blood there and a tuft -of grizzled hair, but nothing else. And so he and his son followed red -spots on the snow—right through the forest and across Town Road. And -on the other side of the road, where the hedge comes down, they lost it -clean—not a drop of blood nor the mark of a paw on the snow. But the -dog they had he ran about, and at last he lifted his head and bayed, -and then he started—And where, sir, do you think he led them? He led -them to the hut of old Marget Primrose between Black Hill and Hawthorn -Brook. And Marget was lying huddled, crying with a bloody cut across -her ankle. And they matched the hair from the trap with the hair under -her cap.” - -“They did not match with care,” said Aderhold. “And there are many ways -by which a foot may be hurt.” - -“Nay,” said the serving-man, “but when they brought the trap and thrust -her leg in it the marks fitted.” He continued to stare at the stone -wolf tearing the ear. “That’s been four years, and never since have I -been able to abide the sight of a wolf!... Witches and warlocks and -wizards and what they call incubi and succubi and all the demons and -fiends of hell, and Satan above saying, ‘Hist! this one!’ and ‘Hist! -that one!’ and your soul lost and dragged to hell where you will burn -in brimstone, shrieking, and God and the angels mocking you and crying, -‘Burn! Burn forever!’—Nay, an if they do not get your soul, still they -ravage and ruin what you have on earth—blast the fields and dry the -streams, slay cow and sheep and horse, burn your cot and wither your -strength of a man.... Thicker than May flies in the air—all the time -close around you, whether you see them or you don’t see them—monkeys -and wolves and bat wings flapping.... Once something came on my breast -at night—Satan, Satan avaunt!” - -Aderhold leaned across, seized the bridle of the other’s horse, and -forcibly turned Will from further contemplation of the sculptured -portal. “Come away, or you will fall down in a fit!” - -Carthew ahead was in motion, the mules with the litter following. Will -rode for a few paces with a dazed look which was gradually replaced -by his usual aspect. The red came back into his cheeks, the spring -into his figure. By the time they had reached the bridge he was ready -for something palely resembling a disinterested discussion of the -supernatural. - -“Isn’t it true, sir, that witch or warlock, however they’ve been -roaming, must take their own shape when they cross running water?” - -“Whatever shape matter takes is its own shape,” said the physician, -“and would be though we saw it in a thousand shapes, one after the -other. I have never seen, nor expect to see, a witch or warlock.” - -“Why, where have you travelled, sir?” asked the yeoman bluntly; then, -without waiting for an answer, “They’re hatching thick and thicker -in England, though not so thick as they are in Scotland. In Scotland -they’re very thick. Our new King, they say, does most fearfully hate -them! Parson preached about them not long ago. He said that we’d -presently see a besom used in this kingdom that would sweep such folk -from every corner into the fire! He read from the Bible and it said, -‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!’” - -He spoke with considerable cheer, the apple-red back in his cheeks. -“It’s good to feel,” he said, “that they are nearly all women.” - -They were trampling across the bridge, on either hand the sparkling -water, above their heads the vivid sky. “They are neither man nor -woman,” said Aderhold. “They are naught. There are no witches.” - -He had spoken abstractedly, and more unguardedly than was his wont. -The words were no sooner from his tongue than he felt alarm. They -were not safe words to have spoken, even in such simple company as -this. He looked aside and found that Will was staring, round-eyed. “No -witches?” asked Will slowly. “Parson saith that none but miscreants and -unbelievers—” - -“Tell me about your church and parson,” said Aderhold calmly, and, -aided by a stumble of Will’s horse and some question from the litter -behind them, avoided for that time the danger. - -They crossed the bridge and left behind the winding river and the -town that climbed to the castle, clear-cut and dark against the -brilliant sky. Before them, lapped in the golden sunshine, spread a -rich landscape. Field and meadow, hill and dale, crystal stream and -tall, hanging woods, it flickered and waved in the gilt light and the -warm, blowing wind. There were many trees by the wayside, and in their -branches a singing and fluttering of birds. The distance shimmered; -here was light and here were violet shadows and everywhere hung the -breath of spring. From a hilltop they saw, some miles away, roofs and -a church tower. “Hawthorn Village,” said Will. “The Oak Grange is two -miles the other side.” - -Master Hardwick parted the curtains of the litter and called to the -physician. His heart, he said, was beating too slowly; it frightened -him, he thought it might be going to stop. Aderhold reassured him. -He had a friendly, humorous, strengthening way with his patients; -they brightened beneath his touch, and this old man was no exception. -Master Hardwick was comforted and said that he thought he could sleep -a little more. His lean hand clutched the other’s wrist as he stood -dismounted beside him, litter and mules and Will on the sumpter horse -having all stopped in the lee of a green bank disked with primroses. -Master Hardwick made signs for the physician to stoop. “Eh, kinsman,” -he whispered. “You and I are the only Aderholds in this part of the -world. And you are a good leech—a good leech! Would you stay at the -Oak Grange for your lodging, man? I’ve no money—no money at all—but -I’d _lodge_ you—” - -The miles decreased between the cavalcade and the village. Aderhold -was riding now alone, Carthew still ahead, and Will fallen back with -the litter. Looking about him, the physician found something very rich -and fair in the day and the landscape. Not for a long time had he had -such a feeling of health and moving peace, a feeling that contained -neither fever nor exhaustion. There was a sense of clarity, strength, -and fineness; moreover, the scene itself seemed to exhibit something -unusual, to have a strangeness of beauty, a richness, a quality as of a -picture where everything is ordered and heightened. It had come about -before, this certain sudden interfusion, or permeation, or intensity of -realization, when all objects had taken on a depth and glow, lucidity, -beauty, and meaning. The countryside before him was for an appreciable -moment transfigured. He saw it a world very lovely, very rich. It was -noble and good in his eyes—it was the dear Earth as she might always -be.... The glow went as it had come, and there lay before him only a -fair, wooded English countryside, sun and shadow and the April day. - -He saw the village clearly now, with a sailing of birds about the -church tower. Carthew, who had kept steadily ahead, occupied apparently -with his own meditations, checked his horse and waited until the other -came up with him, then touched the roan with his whip and he and the -physician went on together. - -There was something about this young man that both interested and -repelled. He was good-looking and apparently intelligent. Silence -itself was no bar to liking, often it was quite the reverse. But -Carthew’s was no friendly and flowing quiet. His silence had a harsh -and pent quality. He looked often like a man in a dream, but the dream -had in it no suavity, but appeared to contemplate high and stern and -dreadful things. Aderhold looked instinctively first at a man’s eyes. -Carthew’s eyes were earnest and intolerant. In the lower part of his -face there was something that spoke of passions sunken, covered over, -and weighted down. - -The two rode some little distance without speaking, then Carthew opened -his lips abruptly. “How do you like this country?” - -“I like it well,” said Aderhold. “It is a fair country.” - -“Fair and unfair,” answered the other. “It rests like every other -region under the primal Curse—The old man, back there, has taken a -fancy to you and calls you his kinsman. Do you expect to bide at the -Oak Grange?” - -“I think it truth that I am his kinsman,” answered Aderhold. “For the -other—I do not know.” - -“He is misliked hereabouts,” said Carthew. “He is old and miserly. -Those who have goods and gear like him not because he will not spend -with them, and those who have none like him not because he gives -nothing. The Oak Grange is a ruinous place.” - -The village now opened before them, a considerable cluster of houses, -most of them small and poor, climbing a low hill and spreading over a -bit of meadow. The houses were huddled together, but they enclosed -a village green and here and there rose old trees, or showed a tiny -garden. At the farther end, on the higher ground, the church lifted -itself, dominating. Beyond it ran the highway still. The landscape -was fair, with hill and dale, and to the right, against the horizon, -violet-hued and misty, an old forest. - -Aderhold looked somewhat wistfully at the scene before him. He had -passed through much of harm and peril. Body and mind he wanted rest, -quiet routine, for a time some ease. “It looks a place where peace -might be found,” he said. - -“Five years ago,” said Carthew, “we had the sweating sickness. Many -died. Then all saw the shadow from the lifted Hand.” - -“It is wholesome now?” - -“Aye,” answered the other, “until sin and denial again bring bodily -grief.” - -Aderhold glanced aside at his companion. The latter was riding with a -stern and elevated countenance, his lips moving slightly. The physician -knew that look no less than he had known the serving-man’s. - -“Is it not,” demanded Carthew, “is it not marvellous how the whole -Creation groaneth and travaileth with the knowledge of her doom! How -contemptible and evil is this world! Yet here we are sifted out—and -not the wise man of old, nor the heathen, nor the ignorant, nor the -child in his cradle is excused! Is it not marvellous how, under our -very feet, men and women and babes are burning in hell! How, for -Adam’s sin, all perish save only the baptized believer—and he is saved -in no wise of his own effort and merit, but only of another’s! How God -electeth the very damned—and yet is their guilt no whit the less! Is -it not marvellous!” - -“Aye, fabulously marvellous,” said Aderhold. - -“The sense of sin!” pursued Carthew. “How it presses hard upon my -heart! The sense of sin!” - -Aderhold was silent. He possessed a vivid enough realization of his -many and recurring mistakes and weaknesses, but, in the other’s -meaning, he had no sense of sin. - -They came to the village and rode through it, the litter arousing -curiosity, allayed every few yards by Will’s statements. Aderhold -observed the lack of any sympathy with the sick old man, even the -growling note with which some of the people turned aside. There was -the usual village traffic in the crooked street, the small shops and -the doorways. Children were marching with the geese upon the green, -where there was a pond, and near it the village stocks. Housewives, -with tucked-up skirts and with pattens,—for an April shower had made -mire of the ways,—clattered to and fro or sat spinning by window or -door. Many of the men were in the fields, but there were left those -who traded or were mechanic, as well as the aged, sitting, half-awake, -half-asleep, in sunny spots. It was the usual village of the time, poor -enough, far from clean, ignorant and full of talk, and yet not without -its small share of what then counted for human flower and fruition, -nor without promise of the future’s flower and fruition. - -They rode by the church, set in dark yews. Almost in its shadow rose -a plain stone house. “Master Thomas Clement, the minister’s,” said -Carthew. “Hawthorn hath a godly and zealous pastor! The town behind us -is all for prelates and vestments and a full half at least of the old -superstitions. But Hawthorn and the country to the north have purged -themselves as far as they safely may.” - -Out upon the open road again they saw to the left, back among trees -upon a low hilltop, a large and well-built house. “Carthew House,” said -Carthew, “where I live. But I think that I will ride on with you to the -Oak Grange.” - -Presently, leaving the highway, they took a rough and narrow road that -led, first through fields and then through uncultivated country, toward -the great wood that had been for some time visible. “Hawthorn Forest,” -said Carthew. They rode a mile in silence, the wood growing darker and -taller until it reared itself immediately before them. To the right, -at some little distance from the road and almost upon the edge of the -forest, stood a thatch-roofed cottage with a dooryard where, later, -flowers would bloom, and under the eaves a row of beehives. “Heron’s -cottage,” said Carthew. “Old Heron lives there, who in the old times -was clerk to the steward of the castle.” - -They entered the wood. It was dark and old, parts of it not having -been cut since Saxon times. Their road, which was now hardly more than -a cart track, crossed but an angle, the Oak Grange lying beyond in open -country. But for some minutes they were sunk in a wilderness of old -trees, with a spongy, leaf-thickened earth beneath the horses’ hoofs. -The sunshine fell shattered through an interlacing of boughs just -beginning to take on a hue of spring. Every vista closed in a vaporous -blue. - -A woman was gathering faggots in the wood. As they came nearer she -straightened herself and stood, watching them. She was young and tall, -grey-eyed, and with braided hair the colour of ripe wheat. “Heron’s -daughter,” said Carthew when they had passed. “She should cover her -hair like other women with a cap. It is not seemly to wear it so, in -braids that shine.” - -They were presently forth from the forest; before them a stretch of -fields no longer well husbanded, a stream murmuring among stones, a bit -of orchard, and an old, dilapidated dwelling, better than a farm house, -less than a manor house, all crusted with lichen and bunched with ivy. -A little removed stood the huge old granary that had given the place -its name, but it, too, looked forlorn, ruinous, and empty. “The Oak -Grange,” said Carthew. “People say that once it was a great haunt of -elves and fairies, and that they are yet seen of moonlight nights, -dancing around yonder oak. They dance—but every seven years they pay a -tithe of their company to hell.” - - - - -CHAPTER VI - -THE MAN WITH THE HAWK - - -ADERHOLD saw no fairies, though sometimes of moonlight nights he -pleased his fancy by bringing them in his mind’s eye in a ring around -the oak. Hours—days—weeks passed, and still he abode at the Oak -Grange. - -Together he and Master Hardwick had gone over an ancient record. There -was the Aderhold line, intertwining with the Hardwick. The blood-tie -was not close, but it was there. Back in the reign of the sixth Henry -they found a common ancestor in one Gilbertus Aderhold, slain on -Bosworth Field. The blood-warmth was between them. Moreover, the old -man had turned with a strong liking to this present Aderhold, and -besides all there was his fear of illness and death. How well to have a -leech always at hand! At last it came to “Will you live here for your -roof and keep? I could not give you money—no, no! I have no money to -give.” - -Refuge—security—here in this silent place, behind the great screen -of Hawthorn Wood.... Aderhold stayed and was glad to stay, and served -the old man well for his keep. The region grew to know that here was -old Master Hardwick’s kinsman, brought with him when he came back from -London, to live with him and doubtless become his heir. He was a -leech. Goodman Cole, living by the forest, fell ill of a racking cough -and a burning fever, sent for the doctor at the Grange, was swiftly -better, and sang the leech’s praises. As time wore on he began to be -sent for here and there, chiefly to poor people’s houses. Eventually he -doctored many of such people, now in the village, now in the country -roundabout. Few of the well-to-do employed him; they sent to the town -for a physician of name. He asked little money for his services; he did -not press the poor for payment, and often as not remitted the whole. He -earned enough to keep him clad, now and then to purchase him a book. - -He soon came to the conclusion that whatever store of gold Master -Hardwick might once have had, it was now a dwindling store. In whatever -secret place in his gaunt, bare room the old man kept his wealth, he -was, Aderhold thought, nearing the bottom layer. There was a rueful -truth in the anxiety with which he regarded even the smallest piece -of either metal he must produce and part with. And if, at the Oak -Grange, there was little of outgo, there was still less of income. The -land which went with the Grange was poor and poorly tilled. There was -a cot or two with tenants, dulled labourers, dully labouring. Mostly -they paid their rent in kind. He heard it said that in his middle life -Master Hardwick had ventured with some voyage or other to the Indies, -and had received in increase twenty times his venture. If so, he -thought that his venture must have been but small. - -Master Hardwick kept but the one man, Will the smith’s son, who did -not sleep at the Grange, but came each morning and cared for the horse -and the cow and the garden. Within doors there was old Dorothy, who -cooked and cleaned, and, now in and now out, there strayed a lank, -shy, tousle-headed boy, her nephew. The old house was dim and still, -as out of the world as a house may be. Master Hardwick rarely stirred -abroad. There was in truth a lack of health. The physician thought -that the old man had not many years to live. Aderhold set himself with -a steady kindness to doing what could be done, to giving sympathy and -understanding, and when the old man wished it, companionship. Sitting -in the dim house with him, facing him at table over their scant and -simple fare, listening to his brief talk, the physician came to find, -beneath a hard and repellent exterior, something sound enough, an -honesty and plain-dealing. And Master Hardwick, with a hidden need both -to feel and receive affection, turned and clung to the younger man. - -Visitors of any nature rarely came to the Oak Grange. The place was -as retired as though fernseed had been sprinkled about and the world -really could not see it. Once, during this early summer, Harry Carthew -came, riding across the stream upon his great roan. But this day -Aderhold was away, one of the tenants breaking a leg and a small child -being sent wailing with the news to the Grange. And Master Thomas -Clement came, alike afresh to reason with the miser and to view this -new parishioner. - -Aderhold saw him cross the stream by the footbridge and come on beneath -the fairy oak. He knew who it was, and he had time to map his course. -He had made up his mind—he was worn and weary and buffeted, he was -now for peace and quiet living. He tied a millstone around the neck of -the Gilbert Aderhold of Paris and sank him deep, deep! The minister -stayed no great while and directed most of his discourse toward Master -Hardwick. When he turned to Aderhold, the latter said little, listened -much, answered circumspectly, and endued himself with an agreeing -inclination of the head and an air of grave respect. When the minister -was gone, he went and lay beneath the fairy oak, in the spangly -twilight, his head buried in his arms. - -The next Sunday he went to church and sat with a still face, watching -the sands run from the pulpit glass. There were facts about the region -which he had gathered. The town a few miles away with the earl’s seat -above it was prelatical and all for “superstitious usages.” The country -between town and village might be called debatable ground. But Hawthorn -Village and the region to the north of it might have been approved by -Calvin or by Knox. - -Sitting far back, in the bare, whitewashed church, he remarked men and -women truly happy in their religion, men and women who showed zeal -if not happiness, men and women who wore zeal because it was the -fashionable garment, men and women, born followers, who trooped behind -zeal in others, and uttered war-cries in a language not their own. In -the pulpit there was flaming zeal. The sermon dealt with miracles and -prodigies, with the localities of heaven and hell, with Death and the -Judgement—Death that entered the world five thousand and six hundred -and odd years ago. “For before that time, my hearers, neither man nor -animal nor flower nor herb died!” - -Aderhold walked that summer far and wide, learning the countryside. Now -he wandered in deep woods, now he climbed the hills and looked upon the -fair landscape shining away, now he entered leafy, hidden vales, or -traced some stream upward to its source, or downward to the murmur of -wider waters. Several times he walked to the town. Here was a bookshop, -where, if he could not buy, he could yet stand awhile and read.... He -loved the view of this town with the winding river and the bridge, -and above the climbing streets the old castle and the castle wood. He -liked to wander in its streets and to mark the mellow light upon its -houses. Now and then he went into the great church where the light -fell through stained glass and lay athwart old pillars. Once he found -himself here, sitting in the shadow of a pillar, when people began to -enter. Some especial service was to be held, he knew not wherefore. The -organ rolled and he sat where he was, for he loved music. There was a -sermon, and it was directed against Puritan and Presbyterian, and more -especially against that taint of Republicanism which clung to their -Geneva cloaks. No such imputation breathed against the surplice. _The -Divine Right of Kings._—_The duty of Passive Obedience._—_Authority! -Authority! Authority!_ It rolled through the church, boomed forth with -passion. - -Aderhold, coming out into the sunshine, walked through the town and -found himself upon the London road. It was high summer, the sun yet -far aloft, and when it sank the round pearl of the moon would rise. He -had not before walked upon this road. An interest stirred within him -to view the country toward the Rose Tavern, travelled through in the -darkness that night. He left the town behind him and walked southward. -Between two and three miles out, he saw before him a little rise in the -road, and crowning it, a gibbet with some bones and shrivelled flesh -swinging in the chains. It was nothing uncommon; he had seen in France -a weary number of such signposts, and on this great road, coming north -from London, he had twice passed such a thing. It was so fair and soft -a summer’s day, the gauzy air filled with dancing sunbeams, the sky -a melting blue—the very upright and cross of the gibbet faded into -it and seemed robbed of horror. Indeed, long usage had to the eyes of -most robbed it of frightfulness at any hour, unless it was in the dead -of night when the chains creaked, creaked, and something sighed. The -traffic of the road went talking and jesting by, with hardly a glance -aside at the arm across the sky. - -Aderhold sat down upon the opposite bank, amid fern and foxglove, and -with his chin in his hand regarded the gibbet. Now and again man and -beast passed, but they paid no attention to the dusty, seated figure. -For the greater while the road lay bare. He gazed, dreaming, and -through the mists of time he seemed to see Judea.... - -At last he spoke. “Carpenter of Nazareth! Man as we are men, but a -Prince in the house of Moral Genius! Born with thy heritage, also, of -an ancient, savage faith, in thine ears, still, old saws of doom, on -thy lips at times hard sayings of that elder world, in thy mind, yet -unresolved, more than one of the ancient riddles.... But thou thyself, -through all the realm of thy being, rising into the clearer light, -lifting where we all shall lift one day, transfiguring life!... Genius -and Golden Heart and Pure Courage and Immortal Love.... Condemned -by a Church, handed over by it to the secular arm, gone forth to -thy martyr’s death—and still, Sage and Seer! misunderstood and -persecuted,—and still thou standest with the martyrs ... slain afresh -by many, and not least by those who call themselves thine. Wisdom, -freedom, love.... Love—Love—Love!” - -The fox-gloves nodded around him. He drew toward him a long stem and -softly touched, one by one, the purple bells. “Freedom—love!... Thou -flower! When shall we see how thou flowest into me and I into thee?” - -He let the purple stem swing back, and with his hands about his knees -again regarded the gibbet; then, when some minutes had gone by, rose -and pursued his way. Another half-hour and he came to a place where -three roads met. A passing shepherd boy told him the name was Heron’s -Cross-Roads. It was a lonely place, wold and stunted wood, and in an -angle, amid heath and briar, was set a blackened stake. Aderhold went -across to it. In the wood was a rudely cut name, with a word or two -below; the stake was set through the heart of a suicide. Nettles were -about it, and some one passing had thrown an empty and broken jug of -earthenware. It lay in shards. Aderhold knelt, gathered them together, -and rising, laid the heap beneath the hedge. - -Back upon the highway, he turned his face again to the town. It was -a long way to the Oak Grange, and Master Hardwick was concerned if -the house were not closed and fast at a most early hour. _Heron’s -Cross-Roads._ As Aderhold walked an association arose with the name. -Heron—that was the name of the old man who owned the cottage on the -edge of Hawthorn Forest. He was not there now; the cottage had been -shut up and tenantless since early summer. He and his daughter were -gone, Will had told him, on a long visit to the old man’s brother, the -earl’s huntsman who lived in the castle wood above the town. No one -knew when they would be back. Most of their furnishings and household -things had been loaned here or there. The dairy woman had taken their -cow, some one else the beehives. Heron! He had a moment’s drifting -vision of the girl gathering faggots in the forest. It passed and the -present day and landscape took its place. Soon he came again to the -rise of ground and the gibbet so stark against the blue. He hesitated, -then paused, resting as he had rested before upon a stone sunk in the -wayside growth. - -A horse and rider emerged with suddenness from a sunken lane upon his -left, and stood still in the middle of the road—a fine horse, and a -fine, richly dressed rider, a man of thirty-five with a hawk upon his -gauntleted fist. Turning in the saddle he looked about him, and espying -Aderhold where he sat, called to him. - -“Hey, friend! Have the earl and his train passed this way?” - -“I have not seen them, sir.” - -The other glanced around again, then beckoned with an easy command. -Aderhold rose and went to him, to find that he was wanted to hold the -hooded falcon while the horseman waited for the hawking party from -which some accident had separated him. Aderhold took the peregrine -from the other’s wrist and stood stroking softly with one finger the -blue-black plumage. The rider rose in his stirrups, swept the horizon -with his eye, and settled back. “Dust in the distance.” His voice went -with his looks—he seemed a rich and various person, who could show -both caprice and steadfastness. Now he glanced downward at Aderhold. -“Ha, I had not observed you before!—A travelling scholar?” - -“A travelling physician, an it please you,” said Aderhold, smoothing -the bird with his finger, “biding at present at the Oak Grange, beyond -Hawthorn Village.” - -“You take,” said the horseman with a glance at the gibbet, “a merry -signpost to rest beneath!” - -“It is neither merry nor dismal,” said Aderhold, “but a subject for -thought. That which swung there swings there now—though shrunken and -dark and answering to no lust of the eye. But that which never swung -there swings there now neither. I trouble it not. It is away from here.” - -The other swung himself from his saddle. “I had rather philosophize -than eat, drink, or go hawking—and philosophers are most rare in this -region!” He took his seat upon a heap of stones, while his horse beside -him fell to grazing. “Come, sit and talk, travelling scholar!—That -fellow on the gibbet—that small, cognized part of him that was hanged, -as you would say. Being hungry, he slew a deer for his own use, then -violently resisted and wounded those sent to his hut to take him, and -finally, in court he miserably defamed and maligned the laws of the -land and the judge in his chair. So there he swings for an example -to stealers of deer and resisters of constables, to say naught of -blasphemers of procedure and churls to magistrates!... What is your -opinion, travelling scholar, of Authority?” - -“Nay,” said Aderhold, “what is yours?” - -The other laughed. “Mine, Sir Prudence?—Well, at times I have thought -this and at times that. Once or twice a head like Roger Bacon’s has -spoken. ‘The swollen stream forgets its source, and the overweening son -turns and with his knotted and sinewy hands chokes his mother that bore -him.’” - -“It is a good parable,” said Aderhold. “I trust that your worship, -being obviously of those in authority, will often listen to that brazen -head!” - -“Ah!” answered the other. “I am of that camp and not of it. My brazen -head will yet get me into trouble!” He sat regarding the mound -opposite, the tall upright and arm, the creaking chain, and the -shapeless thing, now small, for most of the bones had fallen, which -swung and dangled. “And, friend, what do you think of this matter of -the Golden Age, man’s perfection, Paradise, the friendship of angels -and all wisdom and happiness lying, in the history of this orb, -_behind_ us?” - -“If it were so,” said Aderhold, “then were it well to walk backwards.” - -“So saith my brazen head!—Hark!” - -It was a horn winding at no great distance. There came a sound of -approaching horsemen, of voices and laughter. The waiting cavalier -rose to his feet, caught his horse by the bridle and mounted. Aderhold -gave him back the falcon. The earl and his train, a dozen in all, -gentlemen, falconers, and grooms, coming across the fields, leaped the -hedge and crowded into the road, gathering into their number the rider -with the hawk. Aderhold heard him named as “Sir Richard.” He waved -his hand to the physician—all rode away with a flash of colour and a -blare of sound. A few moments, and there was only the bare highway, the -little rise of ground, and the gibbet with its outstretched arm against -the blue and serene sky. - -Aderhold, keeping on to the town, passed along its bustling high -street, and down the steep slope, beneath the shadow of the great -church and the castle in its woods above, to the river and its -many-arched, ancient bridge. Before him lay the fair country between -the town and Hawthorn village. He travelled through it in the late, -golden light, and at sunset came into Hawthorn. Children were playing -and calling in the one street and several lanes, on the green, by the -pond, and the village stocks. The ale-house had its custom, but, as he -presently saw, most of the inhabitants of Hawthorn were gathered in a -buzzing cluster before the church. A post, riding from London north, -had passed through the village and left behind a dole of news. Among -his items, principal to Hawthorn was this: The King, they say, will -presently of his good pleasure, lighten the pains and penalties now -imposed upon Papists. - -Aderhold, touching the fringe of the crowd, caught a glimpse of Master -Clement, standing upon the church steps, haranguing. He caught the -words, “The Scarlet Woman ... Babylon ... Lighten? Rather double and -treble and quadruple—” Near the minister he saw Harry Carthew. He did -not pause; he went by like a moth in the dusk. As the moon rose he came -to the stream before the Grange, crossed it by the footbridge, and went -on beneath the fairy oak to the house where one candle shone from a -single window. In the middle of the night he was wakened by some one -calling and throwing pebbles against his casement. The miller, a mile -down the stream, was ill and groaning for the leech. - - - - -CHAPTER VII - -JOAN - - -IT was May three years since Joan had smelled the apple tree in blossom -by the well, or had marked the heartsease amid the grass. She drew -her bucket of water, flashing, dripping, and cold, rested it upon the -well-stone, and regarded with grey eyes the cottage and its handbreadth -of garden. - -She sighed. There had been much of advantage in that long sojourn -with her uncle the huntsman, in his better house than this, a mile -in the castle wood, above the town so much greater than Hawthorn -Village! There had been the town to walk to, the bright things to see, -the bustle in the streets, the music in the church, the occasional -processions and pageants, the fairs and feast days. For the castle -itself, the great family was not often there, but the housekeeper had -been friendly to her, and she had been let to roam as she pleased -through the place, half-mediæval stronghold, half new walls and -chambers echoing Tudor luxury. Four times in the three years the -family had been in residence, and then there were other things to -watch, though at a most respectful distance!... Once there had been a -masque in the park, and, as many figures were needed, there had come -an order from the countess. A page had brought it, and had explained -in detail, what was wanted. There was to be a whole pageant of scenes -from the mythology. She was to enact a virgin who had been very -swift of foot—she was to run swiftly from north to south across the -great pleasaunce—a young gentleman, who would be running likewise, -would throw before her, one after the other, three yellow apples. -She would stoop and pick them up while he ran on. She nodded. “Yes, -I know. Atalanta.” The page, who was younger than herself but comely -and court-bred, evinced surprise. “Wherever, Phyllis, didst get that -learning?” She said that her father was clerkly and talked to her of -things in books.... The masque! It was a world to remember, the masque! -How beautiful all things had been, and everybody—and kind! But there -had never been but the one masque, and soon the family had gone away. - -She was thinking, as she stood by the well, that now perhaps they would -come back this May and she would not be there. She drew a long sigh, -and missed the castle, the park and the wood, the town and the sight -of the river and the bridge, over which something was always passing. -She missed, too, her uncle the huntsman, who had died; missed his -larger house and the greater coming and going; missed her room, where, -standing at her window, she saw the moon rise behind the Black Tower. -And now her uncle was dead who had been a single man, and who had -kept them from month to month and year to year with his loud protest -each time they talked of lifting a burden and going back to Hawthorn -Forest.... But he was dead, and his house passed to the new huntsman. -Joan and her father loaded their clothes and such matters upon a cart, -mounted it themselves, and with some farewells to castle neighbours -took the road to their own small cottage, miles away. - -She sighed, but then, with her eyes upon the heartsease, determined to -make the best of it. It was not as though she did not love the cottage -and the garden, where presently all the flowers would bloom again, and -Hawthorn Forest, where she had wandered freely from childhood. She did -love them, she had a warm love for them; and sometimes at her uncle’s -she had pleased herself with being pensive and missing them sadly. She -loved her father, too; the old clerk and she were good friends, so good -friends, in an age of parental severity and filial awe, as to have -scandalized the housekeeper at the castle. Moreover, though they were -poor and had always lived so retired, and though the country hereabouts -afforded few neighbours, and though she had never known many people in -the village, having been but a young maid when she went away, there -were those whom she remembered, and she looked forward to a renewal of -acquaintance. And the day was very rich and fair, and a robin singing, -and waves of fragrance blowing from the fruit trees, and she was young -and strong and innately joyous. She broke a branch of apple blossom -and stuck it into the well water; she stooped and plucked a knot of -heartsease and fastened it at her bodice throat. Then she lifted the -bucket to her head, and moved with it, tall and steady, over the worn -stones of the path to the cottage door. - -Arrived within, she fell to her baking, in a clean kitchen with doors -and windows wide. She was a notable cook, her mother having trained -her before she died. Moreover, what she touched she touched like an -artist. She made no useless steps or movements, she neither dallied -nor hurried; all went with a fine assurance, an easy “Long ago I knew -how—but if you ask me _how_ I know—!” She sang as she worked, a brave -young carolling of Allan-à-Dale and John-à-Green and Robin Hood and -Maid Marian. - -The good odour of the bread arose and floated out to mingle with the -maytime of the little garden. Old Roger Heron, short, ruddy, and hale -for all he was so clerkly, came in from his spading. “That smells -finely!” he said. He dipped a cup into the well water and drank. - -“Aye, and it is going to taste finely!” answered Joan. - - “‘I have heard talk of bold Robin Hood, - And of brave Little John, - Of Friar Tuck and Will Scarlet, - Locksley and Maid Marian—’” - -Her father put down the cup, moved to the settle, and sitting -deliberately down, began with deliberation one of his talks of -a thinking man. “Look you, Joan! Goodman Cole and I have been -discoursing. We were talking of religion.” - -“Aye?” said Joan. She spread a white cloth upon the table and set in -the midst a bow-pot of cherry bloom. “Religion. Well?” - -“You should say the word with a heavier tone,” said old Roger. -“‘Religion.’—Things aren’t here as they were at your uncle’s—rest -his soul! Modesty in religion and a decent mirth seemed right enough, -seeing that the earl was minded that way and on the whole the town -as well. So the old games and songs and ways went somehow on—though -everything was stiffening, even there, and not like it was when I -was young and the learned were talking of the Greeks. But times have -changed! It seems the Lord wishes gloom, or the minister says he -does. If it was begun to be felt in the castle and the town, and it -was,—your uncle and I often talked about it,—it shows ten times more -here. Aye, it showed three years ago, but Goodman Cole says it grows -day by day, and that now if you appear not with a holy melancholy you -are little else than a lost soul!” - -“‘Holy melancholy’ and ‘lost souls,’” said Joan. “I know not why it -is that those words together sound to me so foolish.—Doth it help -anything when I am sad?” - - “‘—Friar Tuck and Will Scarlet, - Locksley and Maid Marian—’” - -“Stop, child!” said old Roger. “I’m in earnest and so must you be. -Look you, Joan! you’re all I’ve got, and folk will be fanciful about -all they’ve got and try to guard it all around. And it came into my -head while Goodman Cole was talking—and it was he who put it there, -talking of your looks, and saying that you had better go mim-mouth to -church, and that you had a strange way of looking straight at a body -when you spoke, which didn’t become a woman, who ought always to go -with a downcast look—it came into my head, I say, that we’re poor and -without any protector and fairly strange here now, and how evil tongues -are as common as grass, and I said to myself that I’d give you a good -cautioning—” - -“Mim-mouth and downcast look and go to heaven so!” said Joan. “I wonder -what that heaven’s like!” - -“You mustn’t talk that way,” said old Heron. “No, I know, you don’t do -so when others are by, but you’ll forget sometime. Mistress Borrow at -the castle said that you were a very pagan, though an innocent one! -That came into my head, too, while he talked. And another thing came -that sounds fanciful—but a myriad of women and girls have found it no -fancy! Listen to me, Joan. Since we got our new King, and since the -land has grown so zealous and finds Satan at any neighbour’s hearth, -there’s been a growing ferreting out and hanging of witches. In -Scotland it’s a fever and a running fire and we’re not as far as the -antipodes from Scotland. Now I’m not denying that there are witches; -the Bible says there are, and so, of course, there must be. But it -knocks at my head that many a silly old woman and many a young maid has -been called a witch that was none! And it came to me that Hawthorn’s -not the castle and the castle wood, and that if Mistress Borrow called -you pagan and said that you stepped and spoke too freely for a woman, -it’s like that some here might take it on themselves to think pure -ill—” - -“I see not how they could,” said Joan. “There is no ill to think.—Do -you mean that I am not to sing about Robin Hood and Maid Marian?” - -“I like to hear you,” said old Roger; “but aren’t there godly hymns? -Use your own good sense, my girl.” - -Joan at the window looked out upon the flowering trees and the -springing grass and robin redbreast carolling in the pear tree. When -she turned her eyes were misty. “I like to sing what I feel like -singing. If it chances to be a hymn, well and good—but a forced -hymn, meseems, is a fearful thing! I like to go free, and I like not -a mim-mouth and a downward look. But I like not to bring trouble on -you, and I do not like either to have them set upon me for ungodliness, -nor to have some fool cry upon me for a witch! So I’ll be careful. I -promise you.” She laid the trenchers upon the table and turned out from -its pan a warm and fragrant loaf. “I’ll be careful—oh, careful!—And -now when are we going to get our beehives from the forester’s wife?” - -That afternoon she took her distaff and sat in the doorway and span. -The cottage stood some distance from Hawthorn Forest road, but there -was a narrow greened-over path that wound between. The robin sang -lustily; daffodils, edging the walk to the gate, were opening their -golden cups. Old Heron had gone a mile to engage Hugh the thatcher to -come to-morrow to mend the roof. Joan span and span and thought of the -castle and the masque. - -An hour passed. The gate-latch clicked and she looked up. An old woman, -much bent and helping herself with a knobby stick, was coming toward -her between the rows of daffodils. When she reached the doorstone Joan -saw how wrinkled and drear were her face and form. “Good-day,” she said -in a quavering voice. - -“Good-day,” answered Joan. - -“Good-day,” said the old woman again. “You don’t remember me, but I -remember you, my pretty maid! I mind you running about in the woods, -playing as it were with your shadow, with your hair braided down! Now -you wear it under a cap as is proper. I’m Mother Spuraway, who lives -beyond the mill-race.” - -“I remember now,” said Joan. “I had forgotten. Will you sit down?” - -She brought a stool and set it for her visitor. The other lowered -herself stiffly. “Oh, my old bones! I’ll sit for a minute, sweetheart, -but what I wanted to ask you—” She took Joan by the apron and held her -with shaking fingers. “I wanted to ask you if you wouldn’t be Christian -enough to spare me a measure of meal? I’ll swear by the church door -and the book of prayer that I haven’t had bite nor sup since this time -yesterday!” She fell to whimpering. - -Joan stood, considering her with grey eyes. “Yes, I’ll give you some -meal. But what! They used to say that you were well-to-do.” - -“Aye, aye!” said Mother Spuraway. “They said sooth. I didn’t lack baked -nor brewed, no, nor silver sixpences!—for, look you, I knew all the -good herbs. But alack, alack! times are changed with me.... I’m hungry, -I’m hungry, and my gown’s ragged that once was good and fine, and my -shoes are not fit to go to church in. Woe’s me—woe’s me—woe’s me!” - -Joan went indoors and returned with a piece of bread and a cup of milk. -Mother Spuraway seized them and ate and drank with feeble avidity. -“Good maid—a good maid!” - -“Why do they come to you no more?” asked Joan. - -Mother Spuraway put down the empty cup. “Partly, there’s a leech come -to these parts has stolen my trade. I’ll not say he doesn’t know the -herbs, too, but I knew them as well as he, and I knew them first! But -mostly, oh, dear heart! because there’s been raised a hue and cry that -I didn’t cure with innocence—as though I didn’t cure as innocently -as him! But I’m old—I’m old!... I never had aught to do even with -white magic. There was healing in the herbs and that and good sense -was enough. But I’m old—old, and they bear hard upon women.... And I -hear that there’s a buzz of talk and I may be taken up. I know Master -Clement’s been against me since ever he came to the parish—” She began -to weep, painful slow tears of age. - -Joan looked at her with a knitted brow. “There, mother, there, mother! -I would not let them that hurt me make me weep. See! I’ll give you your -meal, and it will all come straight.” She brought her a full measure, -and a great share of her baking of bread besides. - -Mother Spuraway blessed her for a pitiful maid, got painfully to her -feet, and said she would be going. “You’ve good herbs in your garden, -but I see no rue. If I be straying this way again I’ll bring you a bit -for planting.” - -She went away, her stick supporting her, her eyes still searching -the little leaves and low plants on each side of the garden path and -the faint, winding track between gate and forest road. Joan, in the -doorway, let her distaff fall and sat pondering, her elbow on her knee, -her chin in her hand, and her grey eyes upon the fruit trees. “Shall I -tell father—or shall I not tell father? If I tell him, he will say she -must not come again.... And how am I going to help her coming again?” -In the end, she determined to tell her father, but to represent to him -how hard it was going to be—and how it seemed to her poor-spirited, -loveless, and mean—And as she got this far, she saw another visitor -coming. - -She knew this visitor, and springing up, went to the gate to greet -her. Before she left this countryside she had often, of Sundays in -Hawthorn Church, sat beside Alison Inch, the sempstress’s daughter. -And after she went to the castle Alison had twice been with her mother -to the town, and they had climbed the hill to the castle wood and the -huntsman’s house to see their old neighbours, though, indeed, they -had not been such near neighbours. Alison was older than she, but -at the castle hers had been the advantage, she being at home with a -number of goodly things, and Alison showing herself somewhat shy and -deferential. But now the castle and the park and her uncle’s house -were a dream, and Joan was back in Heron’s cottage that was not on -the whole so good as the Inches’ nor so near the village. Moreover, -she was now almost a stranger, and knowledge and familiarity with all -matters were on Alison’s side, to say nothing of her year or two longer -in the world. Alison felt her advantages, and was not averse to the -other’s recognition of them. Joan and she kissed, then moved somewhat -saunteringly up the path to the doorstone. - -“Mother and I went to take her new smocks to Madam Carthew, and then -when we came back it was so fine, and mother said that she would go -to see Margery Herd, and if I chose I might walk on here.—The place -looks,” said Alison, “as though you had never gone away.” - -“Nay, there are things yet to do,” said Joan, “and that though we’ve -been here well-nigh a month. You would not think how hard it is to get -back the gear we left with folk! They had the use until we came back, -and they knew that we would come back—but now you might think that we -were asking their things instead of our own! Three women have looked -as black at me! We got our churn but yesterday, and the forester’s -wife still has our beehives. A dozen of her own, and when we ask for -our poor three back again, you might suppose we’d offered to steal the -thatch from over her head!” - -They sat down, facing each other, on the sunflecked doorstone. - -Alison looked about her. “I’ve never seen daffodillies bloom like -these!—Joan, I heard a story on thee the other day.” - -“What story?” - -“They said thou hadst a lover in the town—a vintner.” - -“I never had a lover, town or country.” - -Alison made round eyes. “What! no one ever asked you to wed?” - -“I said not that. I said that I never had a lover.” - -Alison fell to plaiting her apron, her head on one side. “Mother says -that your father’s that sunk in notions of the learned that he’d never -think of it, but she wonders that your uncle didn’t see fit to find you -a husband.” - -“Does she? Well, one wonders over one thing and one over another.” - -“There are very few bachelors and marriageable men hereabouts,” said -Alison, “but I suppose you’ll get that one of them you set your cap -for.” - -“And why do you suppose that?” - -Alison, her head still on one side, looked aslant at the returned -friend. “Oh, men are all for strange and new! Your tallness, now, -that most people count a fault, and that colour hair and that colour -eyes.... Yes, you’ll get the one you want.” - -“And if I want none?” - -“Oh!” said Alison, and laughed somewhat shrilly. “Have you got an elfin -man for your true-love? You’ll not cheat me else with your ‘And if I -want none?’” - -Joan twirled her distaff. “I do not wish to cheat you.—And you went -with the smocks to Madam Carthew’s?” - -Alison bent, slipped off her shoe, and shook out of it a minute pebble. -“And what do you mean by that?” - -“Mean? I mean naught,” said Joan. “I meant that she was a great lady, -and the squire’s house must be fine to see. What didst think I meant?” - -But Alison would not divulge. All that came was, “_I_ noted you last -Sunday, how you looked aside, during the singing, at the gentry in the -squire’s pew! But they are godly people, and if you think that _they_ -looked aside—” - -“In God’s name!” said Joan, “what is the matter with the wench?” - -But before she could find that out, here came one back—Mother -Spuraway, to wit. She came hobbling up the green path to the gate, and -stood beckoning. Joan rose and went to her. Mother Spuraway held in her -hand a green herb taken up by the root with earth clinging to it. - -“It is rue, dearie,” she said. “There was a clump of it left by the -burned cot a little way off. So I dug it up for you—” - -Joan took it. “Thank you. I’ll plant it now.” - -“You’ve got company,” said Mother Spuraway. “I’ll not come in. But I -wanted to do somewhat for you—” - -She turned and hobbled off, her wavering old figure wavering away upon -the twisting path. - -Joan went back to the doorstone with the rue in her hand. - -“Wasn’t that Mother Spuraway?” asked Alison. “I wouldn’t be seen -talking to her. She’s a witch.” - -“She’s no such thing,” said Joan. “She’s only a wretched, poor old -woman. Now, what did you mean about Sunday and church?” - -But her father came round the corner of the cottage, bringing with him -Hugh the thatcher to have a look at the torn roof. Alison rose; the -sun was getting low and she must be going. She went, and Joan, at that -time, did not find out what she had meant. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - -THE SQUIRE’S BROTHER - - -FOUR days later she went to walk in Hawthorn Forest. It was a golden -afternoon, and she had hastened her work and got it out of hand. The -roof was mended, the beehives were back, the cottage taking on an air -of having been lived in all this while. Old Heron earned by scrivener’s -work. It was not much that he found to do, but it gave them plain fare -and plain clothes to wear. Joan, too, from time to time sold to a -merchant flax that she had spun.... She had gone no way into the forest -since their return, there had been each day so much to do! But to-day -an image had haunted her of how the forest used to look in its garb of -May. - -She let the gate-latch fall behind her and went out in the grey-green -gown that she had spun and dyed herself. She wore a small cap of linen -and a linen kerchief. Sunday she would wear a bluish gown, and a cap -and kerchief of lawn. She was tall and light upon her feet, grey-eyed -and well-featured, with hair more gold than brown, with a warm, -sun-flushed, smooth, fine-textured skin, and a good mouth and chin and -throat. The sun was three hours high; she meant to have a long and -beautiful time. - -So close to the forest edge was the cottage that almost immediately -great trees were about her, leaf-mould and flowerets beneath her feet. -The forest was hardly yet in full leaf. There spread about her a divine -pale emerald fretwork, and gold light in lances and arrows, and closing -the vistas purple light in gauzy sheets and curtains. The boles of -the trees were marvels, the great spreading branches kings’ wonders, -every slight fern illustrious. The stir and song of hidden birds, the -scurrying of a hare, a glimpse down a beechen aisle of a doe and fawn, -filled a cup of delight. She was Greek to it all, a country girl of -Attica. Merely to live was good, merely to vibrate and quiver to the -myriad straying fingers of life, merely to be, and ever more to be, -with a fresh intensity! - -On she wandered with a light step and heart, now by some handbreadth of -sward, now in a maze of trees. Now and then she stood still, gazing and -listening and smelling the good earth. Once or twice she rested upon -some protruding root or fallen log, nursed her knees and marked the -minute life about her. - -Happy, happy, happy! with the blood coursing warmly and sanely through -her veins, with her senses keen at the intake and her brain good at -combining.... Open places, small clearings, existed here and there in -the forest with, at great intervals, some hut or poor cottage. So it -was that she soon came in sight of the burned cot and trodden bit of -garden whence Mother Spuraway had plucked the rue. - -The place lay curiously, half in gold light, half in deep shadow. The -stone chimney was standing, together with some portion of charred -rafter. There were currant and gooseberry bushes, and a plum tree, -but the bit of garden-hedge was broken down and all things had run to -waste. Joan, drawing near, heard children’s voices, and presently, -touching the cleared space, came into view of six or seven village -boys, who, roaming at will or sent on some errand through the wood, -had found here a resting-stage and fascination. They were after -something—she thought a bird’s nest—in a crotch of the plum tree that -brushed the blackened chimney. She stood and watched for a moment, then -called to them. “Leave that poor bird alone!” Two or three, turning, -laughed and jeered, and one small savage at the foot of the tree threw -a stone. Joan was angry, but she could not help the bird—they probably -had nest and eggs by now. She went on, past the burned cot, and was -presently in the greenwood again. - -After a time she found herself upon the Oak Grange road, running across -this corner of the forest. She had not meant to go this way, but a -memory came to her of a stream flowing over pebbles, of an old house -and an oak tree around which they used to say the fairies danced at -night. She walked on upon the narrow and grass-grown road, and after a -little time it led her out of the wood and to the edge of the pebbly -stream. There was a footbridge thrown across, but she did not mean to -go over to the other bank. She had no acquaintance at the Grange. She -had heard Goodman Cole say that the old miser, Master Hardwick, was -still alive, but was rarely seen without the house. Will the smith’s -son had once worked at the Grange, but she did not know if he were -there yet.... She sat down on a stone at this end of the bridge, and -regarded now the old ruinous house sunk in ivy, with the long grass -and ragged shrubs before it, and now the giant oak where the fairies -danced, and now the bright blue sky behind with floating clouds, and -now the shallow, narrow river with its pebbly shore, and now she -regarded all in one. _Ripple, ripple!_ sang the water. - -She sat there some time, but at last, with a long breath, she stood up, -looked a moment longer, then turned and, reëntering the wood, faced -homeward. She had strolled and sauntered and spent her time. Now the -sun was getting low in the west. Presently she left the road and took -the forest track that would bring her again by the burned cot. - -Through the thinning wood she saw the place before her, in shadow now, -except that the top of the plum tree was gold. She thought that she -still heard the boys’ voices. Then, just at the edge of the clearing, -she came suddenly face to face with a man. - -He was a tall man, plainly dressed in some dark stuff. Stopping as he -did when he saw her, stepping aside a pace to give her room, he chanced -to come into a ray of the last slant sunlight. It showed his face, a -lined, rather strange, not unpleasing face. He was carrying in the -hollow of his arm a grey and white cat. The creature lay stretched out, -half-dead, blood upon its fur. - -“Ah,” said Joan, “it was that they were tormenting!” She stood still. -She was sympathetic with animals; they were like everything else, -living and loving to live. She thought they were very like human beings. - -“Aye,” said the man. “But it can recover. It is starved as well.” He -looked at this chance-met young woman. “I meant to carry it back to -Dorothy at the Grange,” he said. “But I am on my way to visit a sick -man and it will be much out of my road. Do you live anywhere near?” He -knit his brows a little. He thought that by now he knew all faces for a -long way around, but he did not know her face. - -“Aye,” said Joan. “I live at Heron’s cottage.—If you wish me to, I’ll -take her and give her milk to drink and let her lie by the hearth for a -while.” - -They were standing beneath the very last line of trees, before there -began the bit of waste and the ruined garden. The village boys were -there yet, turned—all but two of them—to some other idle sport about -the chimney and the fallen beams. These two, loath to give up the beast -they were tormenting, and childishly wrathful against the intruder, -stood watching him from behind a thorn bush. - -“Will you do so?” said Aderhold. “That is well! I am going your way -through the wood. I will carry it until we reach the path to the -cottage.” - -They moved from the clearing and the sight of the thorn bush. It -was dim now in the wood, with an evening wind and darkness stealing -through. They walked rather swiftly than slowly. - -“I heard that Goodman Heron had come back,” said Aderhold. “You are his -daughter?” - -“Yes. I’m Joan.” - -“You have been away a long time.” - -“Aye. Three years come Saint John’s Eve.” - -“Three years.—I have been here three years.” - -“You are the physician?” asked Joan. “You live at the Oak Grange with -Master Hardwick?” - -“Aye. At the Oak Grange.” - -“They say that fairies dance there and that a demon haunts it.” - -“‘They say’ is the father and mother of delusion.” - -“I would wish there were no demons,” said Joan, “but some fairies are -not ill folk. But the minister saith that God hates all alike.” - -They came to the edge of the forest, before them the threadlike green -path to Heron’s cottage. “I must go on now by the road,” said Aderhold. -Joan held out her hands and he put in them the white and grey cat. “You -are a good maid to help me,” he said. “I have little power to do aught -for any one, but if I can serve you ever I will.” He turned to the road -and the sick man, she to the cottage gate. - -The next morning there came a visitor, indeed, to Heron’s cottage, -Master Harry Carthew, the squire’s brother, who fastened his horse to -the elm at the gate, and came up the path between the daffodils in his -great boots and his sad-coloured doublet and wide-brimmed hat. Joan, -watching from the window,—her father was just without and would meet -him,—thought how handsome a man he was, but also how stern was his -aspect, stern almost as if the world were all a churchyard, with graves -about.... It seemed that he had some writings that he wished copied. -As she moved about the kitchen she heard his voice in explanation. The -voice, she thought, was like the gentleman, a well-made voice, and yet -hard, and yet melancholy, too. She heard him say that he would ride by -in a day or so for the writing—and then he said that the day was warm -and asked for a cup of water. - -Old Heron turned his head. “Joan!” - -Joan filled a cup with fresh well water, set it on a trencher for -salver, and brought it forth to the squire’s brother. He lifted it to -his lips and drank. Goodman Cole’s advice to the contrary, Joan stood -with a level gaze, with the result that she was aware that as he drank -he looked steadily at her over the rim of the cup. It was not a free or -distasteful look, rather it had in it melancholy and wonder. He put the -cup down and presently went away. - -Two days thereafter he came with other papers to be copied. A pouring -rain arrived upon his heels and he must sit with old Heron in the -kitchen until it was over. The room was bright and clean. Joan, -having put for him her father’s chair, sat to one side spinning; old -Heron took a stool. They were yeoman stock, and the squire’s brother -was gentry. Carthew spoke little and the others waited for him to -speak. The room was quiet save for the whirr of the wheel and the rain -without. The white and grey cat lay by the hearth. Old Heron had thrown -fresh faggots on the fire, and the tongues of flame threw a dancing -light. - -The little speech there was, and that solely between the two men, fell -upon the affairs of the country. The discovery of the Gunpowder Plot -was seven months old, but England still echoed to the stupendous noise -it had made. Old Heron said something that bore upon the now heavily -penalized state of the Catholics. - -“Aye, they pulled down their own house on their own heads!” answered -Carthew. He spoke with a stern, intense triumph. “I would have them -forth from England! There is warrant for it in all histories. As the -Spaniards pushed out the Jews, so I would push them out!” - -The rain stopped; he rose to go. Old Heron opening the door, let in a -burst of fresh sweetness. Joan stood up from her wheel, and, as Carthew -passed, curtsied. He made an inclination of his head, their eyes met. -There was that in his look that both challenged and besought, that, at -all events, left her troubled enough. - -Again two days and he came to recover what was copied. Again she sat -and span, and again she was conscious that he looked at her rather than -at her father, and that, though he spoke aloud only to her father, -there was some utterance trying to pierce its way to her. He went -away—but the next day he came again, when there was no looking for him. - -Her father was away to the village. She was at the well, beneath the -apple tree, by the heartsease bed. She turned from lifting the cool, -brimming, dripping bucket, and saw him close beside her. - -“Good-day,” he said. - -“Good-day, sir.—He is not here. Father is not here!” - -“I am sorry for that,” he answered; then, after a silence in which she -became aware that he was fighting, she knew not why, for breath, “But -you are here.” - -“Aye,” said Joan. “I—I have so much to do.” She left the bucket on the -coping of the well and started toward the cottage. “Father went but a -little while ago. You may overtake him, sir,—” - -Carthew stood before her. “I have seen you at church three times. I -have seen you here three times. For years I had not thought of earthly -toys—my mind was set on the coming of the Kingdom of God.... And now -_you_—_you_ come.... I think you have bewitched me.” - -Joan’s heart beat violently. A strong presence was beside her, before -her. She wrenched herself free. “You must not speak so, sir. You must -not speak so, Master Carthew! I am naught to you—you can be naught to -me.” Brushing by him, she began to walk swiftly toward the cottage. - -He kept beside her. “You are much to me—and I will be much to you.... -God knoweth the struggle, and knoweth if I be damned or no!—But now I -will abide in this land that I believed not in—but I will serve Him -still; even where I am, I will serve Him more strictly than before! So -perhaps He will accept, and not too dreadfully condemn.... Do not doubt -that I mean honestly by you.” - -“What you mean or mean not, I know not!” said Joan. “But I am all but a -stranger to you, sir, and I will to remain so! Will you not go?—and my -father shall bring you the writings—” - -Carthew’s hand clasped and unclasped. He had gone further than he ever -meant to go to-day. Indeed, he had no plan, no gathered ideas. He might -have pleaded that he was himself a victim, struck down unawares. Forces -within had gathered, no doubt, for a violent reaction after violent, -long-continued repression, and chance had set a woman, young and fair, -in the eye of the reaction—and now in his soul there was a divided -will and war, war! His brow showed struggle and misery, even while his -eyes and parted lips desired wholly. - -With effort he won a temporary control. “I did not mean to frighten -you. I mean no harm. I will say nothing more—not now, at least. Yes, I -will ride away now, and come for the writing another day.—See, I am -naught now but friend and well-wisher!” - -That a squire’s brother should conceive that he might take some slight -liberty with a cotter’s daughter, that he might, on a May day and none -looking, snatch a kiss or steal an arm about her, was truly, in Joan’s -time, neither a great rarity nor a great matter. If it went no further -than that, it need not be especially remembered. Rebuff with vigour, -if you chose, but so that the thing ended there, it was no hanging -matter! At the castle, page or esquire might have been more forward -than Carthew, and Joan, though she sent them about their business, -might have done so with some inward laughter. But Master Harry Carthew! -He was a Puritan, strict and stern, he was always with the minister, -he walked with the Bible and by the Bible. He was no hypocrite either; -it was easy to see that he was earnest. Then what did he have to do -with coming here so, troubling her so? Joan felt a surge of anger and -fright. Something boding and pestilential seemed to gather like a mist -about her. - -The two, both silent now, moved out of the shadow of the fruit trees -into the blossomy handbreadth before the cottage door. As they did so, -Alison Inch came by the gate, saw the horse fastened to the elm, and, -looking through the wicket, Carthew and Joan. If she had meant to come -in or no did not appear; she stood stock-still for a moment, then put -herself into motion again and passed on. - -If Carthew saw her, he paid no attention. But Joan saw her, saw her -face quite plainly. When Carthew—with a sudden and harsh “Good-bye for -this time; or, good-bye forever, if so be I can yet kill this thing -within me!”—strode away and through the gate, and, mounting his horse, -rode off with a stiff bearing, not looking back, she stood for a moment -or two with a still, expressionless face, then, moving slowly to the -doorstep, sat down and took her head into her hands. She was seeing -again Alison’s face. “That’s what she meant the other day—she meant -that at church I was minding, not the psalm, but that man.... Then, -doth she mind him so herself that she looked so, there at the gate?... -Woe’s me!” mourned Joan. “Here’s a coil!” - - - - -CHAPTER IX - -THE OAK GRANGE - - -ADERHOLD sat in the moth-eaten old chair, in the bare room, beside the -bed in which, seventy-odd years before, Master Hardwick had been born -and in which he was now to die. The old man lay high upon the pillows. -He slept a good deal, but when he waked his mind was clear, not -weakened like his body. Indeed, the physician thought that the mental -flame burned more strongly toward the end, as though Death fanned away -some heavy and dulling vapour. - -Master Hardwick was sleeping now. Old Dorothy had tiptoed in to see how -matters went, and, after a whispered word, had tiptoed out again. She -was fond of Aderhold—she said that the Oak Grange had been human since -he came. - -He sat musing in the great chair. Four years.... Four years in this -still house. He felt a great pity for the old man lying drawn and -crumpled there beside him, a pity and affection. The two were kindred. -He had this refuge, this nook in the world, this home to be grateful -for, and he was grateful. Moreover, the old man depended upon him, -depended and clung.... Four years—four years of security and peace. -They had been bought at a price. He saw himself, a silent figure, -watching all things but saying naught, keeping silence, conforming, -agreeing by his silence. He thought a braver man would not have been -so silent.... Four years—four years of the quietest routine, going -where there was sickness and he was called, wandering far afield in a -country not thickly peopled, lying musing by streams or in deep woods, -or moving upon long bare hilltops with the storm sky or the blue sky, -going punctually to church each Sunday, paying to the tithing-man some -part of his scant earnings ... then at the Oak Grange sitting with this -old man, drawing him, when he could, out of his self-absorption and -his fears. Aderhold was tender with his fears; that which weighed upon -his own soul was his own fear, and it made him comprehend the other’s -terrors, idle though he thought they were. He thought that from some -other dimension his own would seem as idle—and yet they bowed him -down, and kept him forever fabricating a mask. - -Four years. In the small bare room which was called his and which, -through care for old Dorothy, he himself kept and cleaned, there stood -an oaken press, where under lock and key he guarded ink and pen and -paper and a book that he was writing. That guess at qualities, at -origins and destinies, that more or less mystical vision, taste and -apprehension of ground and consequence, that intuition of all things -in flood, of form out of form, of unity in motion—all that in France -he had outspoken, and in speaking had like to have lost liberty and -life—all that he had not spoken of here these four years, hard-by -Hawthorn Village and church—all this he was striving to put there -upon paper. He rose at dawn and wrote while the light strengthened; he -bought himself candles and wrote at night when all the place was so -still that silence grew sound. Four years—. - -Master Hardwick stirred, opened his eyes. “Gilbert!” - -“I am here, cousin.” - -“How long—?” - -“I do not know. You do not fail fast nor easily. Your body is -courageous.” - -He gave him to drink. As he put down the cup Dorothy opened the door. -Behind her appeared a man with a black dress, close-cut hair, and a -steeple-crowned hat. Although the day was warm he had about him a wide -cloak. He was short and thin, with a pale, acrimonious, zealot’s face. -He carried in his hand a Geneva Bible. - -Dorothy stammered out, “Master Clement did not wish to wait, master—” - -Clement spoke for himself. “While I waited your master’s soul might -have perished, for a soul can perish in a twinkling.” He put the old -woman aside with his hand and came forward from the door to the bed. -“How do you do to-day, Master Hardwick?” - -The old man made a feeble movement upon his pillows. “I do as I have -done, Master Clement,—I run rapidly toward this life’s end.” - -“Yea,” said the minister, “and I fear me that you run toward worse than -this life’s end! I am come—I am come, Master Hardwick, to wrestle with -the Devil for thy soul! I tell thee, it stands in mortal danger of -dropping from life’s end into that gulf where Dives burns and is mocked -from Abraham’s bosom!” - -Aderhold had risen. Dorothy, having placed a chair for Master Clement, -was on the point of vanishing, but the minister called her back. “Stay, -woman, and be edified likewise! Or wait! Call also the serving-man -and the lad that I saw without. It befits that a dying man, suing for -pardon to an offended King, should have his household about him.” - -Dorothy brought them in, Will and the boy, her nephew. The three stood -in a solemn row. Long habit had made them accept old master and his -ways, but they did not doubt that he stood in peril of his soul. It was -proper that the minister should exhort him. They stood with slightly -lifted and exalted countenances. After all, so little came into their -lives to make them feel a comparative righteousness, to set them in any -wise upon a platform of honour! - -Master Hardwick lay awake and conscious but passed beyond much -speaking. Aderhold withdrew into the shadow of the bed-curtains, and -out of this twilight regarded Master Clement. He knew of more than -one or two heroic things which this man had done. Moreover, he had -heard that years before, when Calvin had by no means as yet tinctured -England, Master Clement had stoutly set up his standard and kept strict -vigil before it. It was whispered that he had stood in the pillory -for “No Pope—and No Prelates!” Aderhold, gazing upon him, was aware -that Master Clement would endure persecution as unflinchingly as, -indubitably, he would inflict it. Each quality somehow cancelled the -other—Master Clement was out of it—and there was left only the gross -waste and suffering.... - -Aderhold had heard priest and preacher, after pulpit cries of human -worthlessness, of the insignificance of the soul, of universal and -hopeless guilt, of the inflamed mind of God, of the hell which, in the -course of nature, awaited every child of Adam, of the predestination -of some, indeed, through grace of another, to an unearned glory, of -the eternal, insufferable loss and anguish of those multitudes and -multitudes and multitudes, who either had never known or heard of that -remedy, or who, the Devil at their ear, had made bold to doubt its -utter efficacy—he had heard and seen such men, at death-beds, in the -presence of solemn and temperate Death, turn from what they preached to -Reason and Love. He had heard them try to smooth away the deep and dark -trenches in the bewildered brain which they themselves had done their -best to dig. He thought their conversion the saddest miracle—sad, -for it did not last. Death passed for that time from their view, back -they went to preach to listening throngs who must die, Inherited Guilt, -Inherited, fiendish punishment, an Inherited, fearful God, an Inherited -curse upon enquiry, and the humbling, indeed, of an Inherited vicarious -atonement.... He wondered that they never foresaw their own death-bed. -He thought that they never truly, bone and marrow, believed what -they said, but that the reverberating voices of the ages behind them -stunned, went through them, produced an automatic voice and action. To -resist that insistence, to breast the roaring stream of the past—he -acknowledged that it was difficult, difficult! - -Three or four times in these years he had chanced to find himself -together with Master Clement at some death-bed. Once he had seen him -soften—a child dying and crying out in terror of the Judgement Day. -“You were baptized—you were baptized—” repeated the minister to him -over and over again. “I baptized you myself. You are safe—you are -safe, my dear child! The Lord Christ will help you—the Lord Christ -will help you—” But the child had died in terror. - -To-day there was no softening in the aspect of Master Clement. This -old man before him was a wretched miser hoarding gold, a solitary who -in this dark old house as probably as not practised alchemy, lusting -to turn lead and iron into gold, and as probably as not practised -it by unlawful and demoniacal aid. Rarely was he seen in church—too -feeble to come, he said; too unwilling, thought Master Clement. He did -not give of his substance, he was bitter and misliked, he asked no -prayers—Master Clement had many counts against him, and was fain to -believe that they tallied with God’s counts. He girded himself and came -forth to wrestle with and throw this soul, and by the hair of its head -to drag it from the edge of the bottomless pit. He wrestled for the -better part of an hour. - -Master Hardwick lay unwinking, high upon his pillows. Aderhold could -not tell how much really entered ear and mind; the old man seemed to be -regarding something far away, something growing in the distance. The -pity of it, he thought, was for Will and old Dorothy and the boy; they -were drinking, drinking. - -At last Master Clement desisted. He stared with a fixed face at Master -Hardwick who stared beyond him. “Thou impenitent old man—!” He rose -and with a gesture dismissed the three in line. Will and Dorothy -and the boy filed out, primed to discuss among themselves master’s -impenitency. “I go now, Master Hardwick,” said the minister, “but I -shall come again to-morrow, though I fear me thou art as utterly lost -as any man in England!” - -Aderhold accompanied him from the chamber into the hall. He knew that -it was in order to speak with unction of the just closed exhortation; -to wonder at the minister’s fervent power, and deprecate with sighs -and shaken head the horrible wickedness of the human heart; to marvel -that any could hold out against the truth so presented—how many -times had he heard such an utterance and seen the self-congratulation -behind—how many times! He knew that the pause which the minister -made, unconscious as it certainly was, was a pause for the accustomed -admiration. When it did not come he saw that, as unconsciously again, -Master Clement’s mistrust of him deepened. He knew that, for all his -locked lips and eyes withheld from expression, for all his stillness, -repression, and church-going, the minister liked him not. The clash of -minds came subtly through whatever walls you might build around it. - -“I fear, Master Aderhold,” now said the minister, “that you have -done little during your residence with your kinsman to bring him to -repentance. Surely, in these years of such close communion, a godly man -could have done much! Such a man as Harry Carthew would have had him by -now day and night upon his knees!” - -Aderhold sighed, then dropped the veil, and raising his head, spoke eye -to eye. “I would that I could make you believe, Master Clement, that -there is in this old man who is coming to die more good than ill. In -these years that you speak of, I have seen that good grow, of its own -motion, upon the ill. Why may it not continue, throughout oceans yet -of experience, to suffuse and gain upon and dissolve and reconcile -unto itself the ill?” - -Master Clement drew a sharp “Ha!” of triumph. Here was heterodoxy -raising its head, and the man had always looked to him heterodox! “Ha! -‘_Of its own motion!_’ Beware—beware, Master Aderhold! I have marked -you—I am marking you still! Beware lest one day you be cited for a -creeping, insidious doubter and insinuator of false doctrine!” - -He went away, striding by the fairy oak in his wide cloak and steeple -hat, with a pale, wrathful, intense face. Aderhold returned to the -room and his patient. Master Hardwick lay upon his pillows, with a -countenance much as it had been. Aderhold, saying nothing, sat beside -him, and presently he fell asleep. Outside it was high summer, but -cool, with a moving air and a rustling of every leaf. Hours passed, the -day waned, the dusk set in. Aderhold, moving softly, made a fire in -the cavernous fireplace, where, even in winter, Master Hardwick rarely -wasted firewood. - -When he came back the old man was awake. - -“Gilbert!” - -“Yes, cousin.” - -“I have a feeling that I am going to-night—” - -“It is possible.” - -“Gilbert ... you’ve been comfortable to me these four years. You’ve -been a kind of warmth and stay, asking nothing, not wasting or -spending, but giving.... They think I am rich, but I am not. I was -never very rich.... I ventured in the Indies’ voyage and gained, and -then I was a fool and ventured again and lost. Since then I have been a -poor man. It is the truth.... Give me something to keep me up—” - -Aderhold gave him wine. After a moment he spoke again. “There are -creditors in the town that you’ll hear from. They’ll take the land—all -but the bit about the house. That and the house I’ve willed you—kin -to me, and kind as well.... The gold they say I’ve buried—I’ve buried -none. There are twenty pieces that you’ll find in an opening of the -wall behind the panel there—” He pointed with a shaking hand that -sank at once. “It’s all that’s left—and you’ll have to bury me from -it.... A miser.... Maybe, but what I saved only lasted me through with -spare living. If I had told them of that heavy loss—my gold gone down -at sea, and that, even so, it was not so much I had had to venture -... would they have believed me? No! I was a miser—I lied and hid my -gold.... Well, I did not tell them.... Do not tell all that you know -and empty yourself like a wine skin—” His voice sank, he slept again. - -Aderhold thought that he might sink from sleep into stupor and so die -painlessly and without words. But in the middle of the night he waked -again. - -“Gilbert!” - -“Yes, I am here.” - -“What did you think of all that which Master Clement had to say?... -How much was true and how much was false?” - -“There was some truth. But much of it was false. It is false because -reason and feeling, the mind and the spirit recoil from it. Whatever -is, that is not.” - -“I never thought it was.... I’ve been called sour and hard and -withholding, and maybe I am it all. But I would not make an imperfect -creature and then plague it through eternity for its imperfection.... -Gilbert—” - -“Yes?” - -“What would you do?” - -Aderhold came and knelt beside the bed, and laid his hands over the -cold and shrunken hand of Master Hardwick. “I would trust and hope—and -that not less in myself than in that Other that seems to spread around -us. I think that ourselves and that Other may turn out to be the same. -I would think of myself as continuing, as journeying on, as surely -carrying with me, in some fashion, memory of the past, as growing -endlessly through endless experience. I would take courage. And if, in -my heart, I knew that in this life I had at times—not all the time, -but at times—been sour and hard and withholding and fearful, and if I -felt in my heart that that made against light and love and wisdom and -strength for all—then, as I lay here dying, and as I died, I would -put that withholding and fear from me, and step forth toward better -things.... There is within you a fountain of love and strength. Trust -yourself to your higher self.... Hoist sail and away!” - -The night passed, and at dawn Master Hardwick died. Aderhold closed -his eyes, straightened his limbs, and smoothed the bed upon which -he lay. Going to the window he set the casement wide. The dawn was -coming up in stairs and slopes of splendour. The divine freshness, -the purity, the high, austere instigation, the beginning again.... -The dawn perpetual, never ceasing, the dawn elsewhere when here would -be noon, the dawn elsewhere when here would be night—Never, from -the first mists upon earth rising to the great sun, had dawn failed, -dawn rising from the bath of night and sleep, dawn the new birth, the -beginning again, the clean-washed.... Aderhold breathed the divine air, -the blended solemnity and sweetness. The light was growing, a thousand -beauties were unfolding, and with them laughter and song. The water -rippling over the stones came to him with a sound of merriment. The -window was clustered around with ivy and a spray nodded, nodded against -his hand with an effect of familiarity, a friend tapping to call his -attention. From some near-by bush a thrush began to sing—so golden, -so clear. “O moving great and small!” said Aderhold; “O thought of all -sense and soul, gathered, interfused, and aware of a magic Oneness! O -macrocosm that I, the microcosm, will one day lift to and be and know -that I am—O sea of all faiths, O temperer of every concept, O eternal -permission and tolerance, nurse of growth and artifex of form from -form!... These children’s masks which we lift upon a stick and call -Thee, crying, Lo, this is God with the fixed face—” - -He rested a little longer in the window, listening to the thrush, then -turned, looked again at the quiet figure upon the bed, and going from -the room wakened old Dorothy and the boy. Later that day, Will, Goodman -Cole, old Heron, and a lawyer from the town being present, he searched -for and found the spring that opened the panel Master Hardwick had -indicated. Behind was a recess, and within it twenty gold-pieces. He -gave them into the lawyer’s hands for keeping. - -They buried Master Hardwick in Hawthorn Churchyard. Hard upon the end -of that, there appeared a merchant and a man of means from the town -with a note-of-hand. The farm land, such as it was, would go there in -satisfaction. The lawyer produced a will made one year before. Lacking -issue and near kindred, Master Hardwick left all that he had, his -creditors being satisfied, to his loving cousin, the physician, Gilbert -Aderhold. What that was in reality was solely the decaying old house -and the few acres of worn garden and orchard immediately surrounding -it. The twenty pieces of gold, when all was paid, shrunk to three. - -Aderhold dwelled solitary in the Oak Grange as he and his kinsman -had dwelled solitary before. The land around went no longer with the -Grange, but there was no change else. The old tenants hung on; it -still spread, poor in soil, poorly tilled, shut off from the richer -vale by Hawthorn Forest. Will no longer came to the Grange; Aderhold, -old Dorothy, and the boy lived in the place and kept it. There was no -other money than the scant sixpences and shillings that the physician -gained. To sell the house sounded well, but there was no purchaser. The -place was ruinous, lonely, and without advantage, said to be haunted -as well. Aderhold, only, had grown to love it, the ivied walls and -the wild garden, the oak and the stream, and the room where he took -from behind locked doors his book and sat and wrote. All was so quiet, -still, secure, there behind the shield of Hawthorn Forest.... - -But Hawthorn countryside and village refused to believe that the -gold was gone. It was known that the dead miser had had a chest-full -of broad pieces. Probably he had buried this great store—some said -under the house itself, some said under the fairies’ oak. Wherever it -was buried, certainly the leech must know where it was; or if he did -not know yet, he would. If one were to go that way through Hawthorn -Forest, and come into sight of the house and see a candle passing from -window to window, or hear a digging sound in the orchard or beneath -the ill-named oak, that would be he.... A whisper arose, none knew -how, that Master Hardwick had practised alchemy, and that his kinsman -practised it too; that he knew how to make gold. If he knew, then, of -course, he would be making it, in the dead of night. Could you make -gold alone, unaided by any but your own powers? Alchemists, it was -known, did not hesitate to raise a spirit or demon. Then there was -little difference between an alchemist and a sorcerer?... There came -among the whispers a counter-statement from several cotters and poor -folk. Master Aderhold was no sorcerer—he was a good leech; witness -such and such a cure! Whereupon opposition sharpened the whisperers’ -ingenuity. Aye, perhaps the demon helped him cure as well as make -gold! Came another counter—he was a good church-goer. So! _but Master -Clement thinks not highly of him_. - -How this vortex and whirling storm began, whose breath first stirred -it up, it were hard to say. It had moved in widening rings for months, -before Aderhold discovered how darkened was the air about him. - - - - -CHAPTER X - -IN HAWTHORN FOREST - - -IT was winter—a mild, bright, winter’s day—when, for the second time, -he met and spoke to Joan in the forest. She was standing beneath a -beech tree, in her hand a dry, fallen bough which she was brandishing -and making play with as though it had been a quarter-staff. She was -singing, though not in the least loudly,— - - “‘I have heard talk of bold Robin Hood, - And of brave Little John, - Of Friar Tuck and Will Scarlet, - Locksley and Maid Marian—’” - -When she saw Aderhold close to her she started violently. - -“Good-day,” he said. “I meant not to frighten you!” - -She looked at him curiously and shook her head. “No.... You did not -frighten me. I am not at all frighted.” - -He smiled. “You say that as though you were surprised at yourself.” - -She looked at him again with grey eyes half-troubled, half-fearless. -“It isn’t so hard to surprise yourself.... You did take that cat you -gave me from the boys who were stoning her at the burned cot?” - -“Yes,” said Aderhold, surprised in his turn. “Why?” - -She stammered. “I heard them talking, and though I believe not such -things, I—I—” - -“What things?” - -She was silent for a moment, then faced him with courage. “I have -heard talk that you don’t believe what other people believe, that you -deny things that are in the Bible, and that maybe you practise sorcery -there in the Oak Grange.... And—and some one once told me that—that -people like that had always familiars which went mostly like little -animals such as a cat or small dog, or sometimes a bird or a frog,—and -that—and that if they offered to give you such a thing for a gift -and—and you took it, you signed yourself so to the Evil One.... -But—but I do not believe such things. They are against all goodness -and—and good sense.” - -She ended somewhat breathlessly; for all her courage, which was great, -her heart was beating hard. - -“You are right,” said Aderhold. “Such things are against all goodness -and good sense—and they do not happen.... I was going to see a sick -man, and passing by the burned cottage, I heard the cat crying, and -went and took her from the boys. She’s naught but just your fireside -cat. And I am a solitary man who has no familiar and knows no magic.” - -He drew a heavy, oppressed breath. “I did not know that there was any -such talk.... It is miserable that there should be.” - -He stood leaning against a tree, with half-shut eyes. Old fears came -over him in a thick and sickening wave. - -“Oh—talk!” said Joan. “There’s always such a weary deal of talk.” -She had regained her calm; at least she was no longer afraid of the -physician. But for all that—and for all her comparative happiness this -beautiful day and for her singing—she looked older and less care-free -than she had done last year. Her face was thinner, and there appeared -in her, now and again, a startled, listening air. It came now. “Do you -hear a horse coming?” - -At no part in the forest were you far from some cart track along which -might, indeed, push a horseman. One was here now, leaving the track and -coming between the tree boles. Presumably he had heard voices. - -Joan rose to her feet. Her eyes were glittering. “No peace—” she said. -“He leaves me no peace at all. I wish he were dead.” - -She spoke in a very low voice, hardly above a whisper, measured, but -tinctured with both anger and dread. It was Harry Carthew, Aderhold -now saw, who approached. He caught sight of them, checked the roan a -perceptible moment, then came on. The great horse stopped within ten -feet of the two beneath the beech tree. Carthew sat looking at them, a -strange expression upon his face. - -Aderhold had no knowledge of the why or wherefore of his look, -though Joan’s ejaculation might be making for illumination. But his -mind was preoccupied with those pale fears which her earlier speech -had awakened. He was thinking only of these—or rather he was not -consciously thinking at all; he was only gathering his forces forward -after the recoil. He answered Carthew’s look with a somewhat blank -gaze. “Good-day,” he said. - -“Give you good-day,” answered Carthew. “How long have you and Joan -Heron been trysting?” - -Aderhold’s thoughts were still away. He repeated the word after the -other, but put no meaning to it. “‘Trysting’—” - -It was Joan who took it up, with a flame of anger. “Who is trysting, -Master Carthew?—Not one of these three—not he with me, nor I with -him, nor I with you! God’s mercy! Cannot a girl speak a civil word to a -chance-met neighbour—” - -“‘Neighbour,’” said Carthew. “That is true. I had not thought of that. -The Grange and Heron’s cottage are not so far apart—might be said to -be neighbours.—’Neighbours’—it is easy for neighbours to meet—with -this dark wood touching each house.” He lifted his hand to his throat, -then turned upon Aderhold with a brow so black, a gesture so violent -that the other instinctively gave back a pace. “I have been blind!” -cried Carthew thickly. “I have been blind!” - -Aderhold, amazed, spoke with an awakening and answering anger. “I do -not know what you mean, Master Carthew,—or, if I guess, seeing that -your words will bear that interpretation,—I will tell you that your -bolt goes wide!—Mistress Joan Heron and I chanced to meet five minutes -before you appeared before us—and I do think in my soul that it is the -second time we have spoken together in our lives! And I know not your -right—” - -“‘Right!’” broke in Joan with passion. “He has no right! And I will not -have him couple my name here and couple it there! Oh, I would”—her -eyes blazed at Carthew—“I would that so great a saint would leave this -earth and go to heaven—if that, indeed, is where you belong!” - -Carthew sat his horse, dark as a thunder-cloud, and for all his iron -frame and power of control, shaking like a leaf. “I believe neither of -you,” he said thickly. He looked at Joan. “This is why you will not -turn to me.” - -Her eyes flamed against him. “I never thought to hate a human creature -as you have made me hate you!—And now I am going home.” - -She snatched up the staff with which she had been playing and turned -with decision. He turned his horse also, but uncertainly, with his -eyes yet upon Aderhold. Black wrath and jealousy were written in -his face, and something else, a despairing struggle against total -self-abandonment. “Stay a moment!” he cried to Joan. “Will you swear -by God on high that you and this man have not been meeting, meeting in -Hawthorn Forest?” - -Joan turned, stood still the moment asked. - -“Master Carthew, shall I tell you what I shall shortly do if you leave -me not alone? I shall go with my father to the squire your brother, -and to the minister, and to the three most zealous men in Hawthorn -Parish, and I shall say to them, ‘This holy and zealous young man whom -I have heard you, Master Clement, call Joseph, and young David, and -what-not—this same Master Harry Carthew, who will speak and exhort and -pray with sinners,—this same man has for months made a harmless girl’s -life wretched to her, offering loathed love and insult—’” - -Her voice broke; she threw up her arms in a gesture of anger and -unhappiness and fled away. Carthew sat like a graven image, watching -her go. He spoke to himself, in a curious voice from the lips only. -“If ever I should come to hate you as now I—” and again—“She will -never dare—” The last flutter of her skirt vanished among the trees. -Suddenly he said with violence, “She denied it not!” and turned upon -Aderhold as though he would ride him down. - -The physician caught the bridle of the roan. “You are mad, Master -Carthew! Look at me!” - -He forced the other’s gaze upon him and a somewhat cooler judgement -into his eyes. Each, with his inner vision, was viewing in waves and -sequences past relations, knowledge, and impressions. For the first -time, general observation and lukewarm interest quickened into the -keen and particular and well-warmed. Aderhold saw again Carthew at the -Rose Tavern, and Carthew upon the road; heard again Carthew’s cosmic -speculations and Carthew’s expressed sense of sin. Four years gone by, -and yet that impression remained the most deeply graved. After that -came the long stretch of time in this region, and, during it, little -speech, few meetings with Carthew. There had been knowledge that at -times he was away, often for months, from Hawthorn, and there had been -observation at church and elsewhere of the sterner sort in him of -Puritan zeal and faith, together with hearsay that the minister and -he were like elder and younger brother in the word, and the younger a -growing power in this part of England and a chosen vessel. And there -had been a kind of half-melancholy, half-artistic and philosophic -recognition of the perfection of the specimen Carthew afforded. In -look, frame, dress, countenance, temper, and inward being, he seemed -the exactest symbol!—Nowhere further than all this had Aderhold come -until to-day. - -As for Carthew, with far narrower powers of reflection, and with those -concentrated with hectic intensity in a small round, it might be said -that in these years he had barely regarded or thought of the physician -at all. Such a statement would be true of all sides but one. Master -Clement had, within the past year, doubted to him any true zeal in -religion on the part of the physician, and had set up a faint current -of observation and misliking. It had been nothing much; at times, when -he thought of it, he marked Aderhold at church, how he looked and -demeaned himself; once or twice when he had overheard some peasant -speak of the leech, he had come in with his deep and stern voice. “Aye? -Can he doctor thy soul as well as thy body?” But the whole together -had weighed little. He had the soul of Harry Carthew to be concerned -for ... though, of course, for that very soul’s salvation, it behooved -to see that other lamps were kept burning.... Nay, it behooved for -those others’ salvation—for the warfare of the true saint was for -the salvation of every soul alive!—All this was before the past few -months. Through these months he had thought but of one thing—or if -at all of another thing, then of how his own soul was on the brink -of the pit, with the Devil whispering, and the heat of the flame of -hell already burning within him.... And now, suddenly, it seemed that -the physician living at the Oak Grange was a figure in the sum. He -looked at him, and where before he had seen but a silently coming and -going learned man, to be somewhat closely watched by God’s saints lest -mysterious knowledge should lead him astray, he saw now a tall man, -still young, not ill-looking, with strange knowledge that might teach -him how to ingratiate.... He spoke in a hollow voice. “I have been -blind.” - -“Whatever you may have been,” said Aderhold with impatience, “you are -blind in this hour. Look at me! Not for the sake of myself, but for the -sake of truth, and to guard another from misapprehension, and to take -a strange poison from your mind, I swear most solemnly that that maid -and I were chance-met but now beneath this tree; that we spoke most -generally, and far afield from what you madly imagine; and that, save -for once before as chance and momentary a meeting, never have we been -alone together! I swear that I think in that wise of no woman, and no -woman of me!” - -“I would,” said Carthew heavily, “that I knew that you speak truth.” - -“I speak it,” said Aderhold. “And in turn I would that you might bring -wisdom and better love into your counsel, and leave the maid alone!” - -Carthew looked at him. “Is there idle talk. Have you heard such -tongue-clatter?” - -“Not I,” answered the other. “What I perceive you yourself have shown.” - -“Or she has said,” said Carthew. He moistened his lips. “Foolish maids -will make much of slight matters!—If I have slipped a little—if Satan -hath tempted me and the foul weakness of universal nature—so that I -have chanced, perhaps, to give her a kiss or to tell her that she was -fair—what hath it been to her hurt? Naught—no hurt at all. But to -me.... Nay, I will recover myself. God help me! I will not put my soul -in perdition. God help me!” He lifted his clasped hands, then let them -drop to his saddle-bow. “I will begin by believing even where I believe -not! What hurt to me if now and again you and Joan Heron speak in -passing?—so be it that with your evil learning and your commerce who -knows where, you put not the maid’s soul in peril ... so be it that you -touch not her lips nor her hand—” He ceased to speak, his face working. - -“You are much to be pitied,” said Aderhold. “Have you finished?—for I -would be going.” - -He drew his cloak about him, and made to pass the other. - -Carthew did not detain him; he only said, “But I shall watch you,” -gathered up the roan’s reins, and himself rode starkly off in the -direction of the village. - -Back upon the forest track which he had pursued, and then upon the road -that ran between Hawthorn and the Oak Grange, he saw naught of Joan, -though he looked for her. She was fleet-footed; by now she was within -her own door. But on the road, no great distance beyond the cottage, -he came upon another woman, walking toward the village. This was the -sempstress’s daughter, Alison Inch.... Two years gone by, Alison had -spent some weeks in Carthew House, sewing for Madam Carthew. He had -been reading aloud that winter to his sister-in-law, who was a learned -and pious lady, and Alison had sat in a corner, sewing and listening. -The reading done, he had at times explained the discourse or added -illustration, encouraging the women to ask questions.—He felt friendly -toward Alison, and always, since that time, answered her curtsy when -they chanced to meet by a grave enquiry as to her health and welfare, -the spiritual being meant rather than the bodily. To-day he walked his -horse beside her. - -“You have been riding through the forest, sir?” she asked. “It is a -fine day for riding.” - -“Yes—I wished to enquire for a man at the North-End Farm.” - -He rode and she walked in silence, then she spoke in a dry, thin, and -strained voice. “I was walking to Heron’s cottage to see Joan. But -she was not there.—She’s not much like others. When she gets her -work done, she’s off to herself somewhere—maybe to the wood, maybe -elsewhere. It’s often so that you can’t find her.” - -Now Carthew had found, too, that you couldn’t always find her. Suddenly -his brow grew black again; he had not put that two and two together. -“Alison,” he said and paused. - -Alison, with an air of not looking at him at all, was watching closely. -“Yes, Master Carthew?” - -He rode a little farther in silence, then he said determinedly: “Master -Aderhold who lives at the Oak Grange—” He paused. - -“Yes, sir?” said Alison. - -“He is a strange man,” said Carthew. “I remember when he came to -Hawthorn, when I rode with him from the town, I thought him of a -strange and doubtful mind.—We have not caught him tripping yet, but -Master Clement holds that he thinks perversely, not according to sound -doctrine.” - -“People say that he makes gold and hoards it,” said Alison, “and that -he hath a familiar.” She was not interested in Master Aderhold, but she -would keep up whatever ball Master Harry Carthew tossed. - -“I know not as to that,” said Carthew. “It is enough if he setteth up -his own judgement and denieth essential doctrines.—It were surely ill -for any upon whom he might thrust his company—ill, I mean, for them to -be seen with him often and in close talk. In common charity any such -should be warned. I dare aver he is often straying through the forest -or upon this road.” - -Alison looked aside. She did not know yet what he would be at, but her -every sense was sharpened. - -“Have you ever seen,” asked Carthew with careful carelessness—“have -you ever chanced to see him and Goodman Heron’s daughter Joan together?” - -Alison walked thrice her own length upon the shadowy road before she -answered. It took a little time to get it straight. It wasn’t Joan’s -soul that he was concerned about—thought one. He was putting her name -with that of the leech—had he seen them together, and now was eaten -with jealousy? She knew how it felt to be eaten with jealousy—thought -two. If he believed that Joan played him false—put him off for -another—it could not but help, his thinking that.... - -“Oh, aye!” said Alison. “I have seen them a dozen times walking and -talking together in the forest. But what a sin, sir, if he should teach -her heresy!” - - - - -CHAPTER XI - -THE PLAGUE - - -LATE that winter, after long immunity, black sickness came to the -town with the great church and the castle, and cast a long, crooked -finger across the river and in the direction of Hawthorn Village. In -the streets of the town burned fires of juniper. Waking in the night -you might hear the wheels of the death-cart. They stopped before -this house, they stopped before that house. The thought trembled and -shrank—one night will they stop before this house? In the daytime the -bells were tolled. - -Hawthorn Village tolled no bells, for to toll bells savoured of -“superstitious usages.” But it looked with a clammy terror at the black -finger which had touched a farmhouse midway between village and town. - -The plague grew worse in the town. More and yet more houses were -marked and shut. The richer sort and those who could left the place, -scattered through the country, not always welcome where they appeared. -The mass who must stay saw the horror increase. A pall came over the -place; there grew an insistent and rapid murmur of prayers. Side by -side with that occurred a relaxation and neglect of usual order. The -strict rule in such cases was against people coming together in any -manner of congregation whereby the infection might spread; but the -watch grew sick and fear constantly sought companions. There was much -drinking in alehouses and taverns, no little gathering together of one -sort and another. Side by side with wild appeals and supplications to -Heaven wavered a sick and wan determination to some sort of mirth. At -times this spirit rose to dare-deviltry. Small crimes increased. The -poor were the hardest stricken, seeing that for them starvation clanked -behind disease. Theft and housebreaking grew common, while professional -thieves might and did make a harvest feast. The church bells tolled. At -night the death-carts increased in number, the closed houses increased -in number, the juniper smoke rolled thicker and thicker. - -But after one death in the farmhouse, halfway to Hawthorn, the black -finger drew back. No one else at the farm was taken, the scattered -houses between it and the village went unscathed; time passed and no -harm came to Hawthorn. Some said the river barred the infection, others -that the air was different. One or two at most called attention to the -great crowding in the town, to the massed poverty and dirt,—whereas -the village was open-built and reasonably clean,—and to the traffic -between the town and a large seaport, whereas small was the business of -Hawthorn and few the strangers. But the most part of Hawthorn Village -and the country to the north of it knew otherwise and said otherwise -with unction and lifted looks. Pestilence came like comets, as a -visitation and a sign from on high. Jehovah launched the one and the -other. Fire against the cities of the plain—plague against prelatical -towns and castles, only not Popish by a narrow line, retainers of -stained glass and images, organ-players and bowers of the head, -waiting but their chance to reinstate a wearing of copes and lighting -of candles! The wonder was not that the plague came, but that Jehovah -had so long withheld his hand! In Hawthorn Church they prayed that the -plague might cease from the afflicted town, but prayed knowing that the -plague had been deserved. Now that the outstretched black finger had -been definitely withdrawn, the analyst might have found in the prayer -of some—not of all—a flavour of triumph. Was it not also Jehovah’s -doing that the pure faith was so adorned with health and vindicated? - -The town grew a gloomy place indeed, filled with apprehension. People -viewing it from distant hills professed to see hanging over it a -darkened and quivering air of its own. The streets had a deserted -look, with fires burning and none around them. The death-carts went -more frequently, and the bells clanged, clanged. There was a need of -physicians, those in the place being overworked and one smitten. About -the time that the black finger drew back from the farmhouse, Gilbert -Aderhold walked to the town and offered his services. Thereafter for -weeks he was busied, day and night. - -Up in the castle above the town, a kinsman of the earl’s stayed on -after the hurried departure of the great family to another seat in an -untouched countryside. Heir to a burdened estate and courtier out of -favour, not pleased for reasons of his own to remove with the earl, and -liking for another set of reasons the very solitariness of the huge -old abode, assured that the infection would not mount the cliff and -pass the castle wood, and constitutionally careless of danger, he asked -leave to stay on, keep ward with the old housekeeper, the armour in the -hall, the earl’s regiment of books, and his own correspondence with -foreign scholars. He stayed, and for exercise rode through the country -roundabout, and now and then, to satisfy a philosophic curiosity, -through the town itself. The ideas of the time as to quarantine were -lax enough. The sick were shut away in the houses, purifying fires -burned in the streets; if you were careful to avoid any who looked -in the faintest degree as though they might be sickening, life and -business might go on. The rider from the castle, when he came down into -the place, carried with him and put often to his nostrils a quantity -of medicated spices and perfumed grains from the Orient, carried in a -small perforated silver box. - -Riding so through the streets one day he came upon Aderhold, his foot -upon the doorstep of a marked house. He drew rein. “Ha, the travelling -scholar!—Are you physician here?” - -“Until the trouble is abated.” - -“Black enough trouble!” said the rider. “Toll, toll! The place is more -ghastly than a row of gibbets.” - -“Abroad,” said Aderhold, “I have seen this sickness in a far worse -form. I have hopes that it will not outlast the winter.” - -The other smelled at his box of spices. “Do you feel no fear, bending -over their beds?” - -Aderhold shook his head. “No. It is my calling.” - -The man on horseback kept ten feet between them and smelled continually -at his silver box, but for the rest was willing to stay and talk. “That -seems to be it. The soldier will run from the pest, but face a cannon -mouth. The sailor rocks upon a masthead or boards a Spanish galleon -with a cutlass between his teeth, but a churchyard ghost turns him into -a whimpering child! Your thinker will scale Olympus and enquire of Jove -direct, but the sight of torn flesh turns him pale. To each his courage -and each his fear! Each a master and each a slave.” - -“Aye,” said Aderhold briefly, “I know that well.” He put his hand upon -the door behind him. “I must not stay.” - -The other gathered up the reins. “I am dwelling at the castle. When the -plague is spent, and the air again is clean and sweet, and old clothing -has been burned and new put on, then, before you travel farther, come -to see me there.—I have faced cannon and fought a galleon. I would -go far to have speech with an authentic ghost. A brazen head would -like me well, and I am constantly considering new Dædalus’ wings. But -to enter that house behind you, and stand over that swollen, ghastly, -loathsomely smelling and moaning thing—no, no! There I am your abject -Eastern slave.” - -He backed his horse farther from the house. - -“Ah,” said Aderhold, “I, too, have a great region where Fear is my -master and sets his foot upon my neck! I will enter this house, but I -make no talk of Dædalus’ wings—seeing that the neighbours like it not, -and that they have the whip-hand!—When all’s well I’ll come to the -castle.” - -The one rode away, the other entered the plague-touched house. The -first, returning home, found company, come from the southward, and -so reaching the castle without passing through the town. An old -nobleman, father of the countess, was here, come unexpectedly from -the Court, and having no knowledge of the family flitting. Now he was -in an ill-humour, indeed, and yet not very fearful of the plague, -and set upon resting his old bones before he pursued his further -journey. Mistress Borrow, the housekeeper, promised to make him -comfortable—there were servants enough—“And your Lordship will be -glad to know that Sir Richard is here.” With his lordship was a London -physician of note, one that had sometimes been called to the old Queen. -For years he had doctored his lordship; now, at special invitation, he -was making this journey with him. - -That evening at supper the talk was almost solely of the plague. The -physician had had experience in London; he had written learnedly upon -the subject, and was reckoned an authority. He talked of preventives -and plague-waters, and hoped that while, for his lordship’s sake, he -should not think of closely exposing himself, he might yet, with proper -precautions, descend into the town and observe the general appearance -of matters. He would be glad to give to the authorities or to the -physicians in the place any advice in his power,—and then he fell to -the capon, the venison pasty, and the canary. The old nobleman asked -Sir Richard how he should get word to William Carthew, living beyond -Hawthorn Village, of his presence at the castle. It seemed that there -was some tie of old service a generation agone,—Carthew’s father had -owed a captaincy and other favours to the nobleman,—and now that he -was dead the present squire and justice always came dutifully to see -the great man upon the occasions when he was at the castle. “They tell -me that he hath turned Puritan—or rather that his younger brother hath -turned Puritan and draggeth William with him. A pack of crop-eared -wretches! I should have thought better of John Carthew’s son. I wish to -see him just to tell him so.” - -“One of the grooms shall be sent to Hawthorn to-morrow morning, sir. If -your man be afraid of infection he may ride around the town and come in -from this side.” - -But the Carthews—for both brothers would ride from Hawthorn to the -castle—were not afraid of infection. The older was unimaginative. As -long as you did not touch nor go too near, you were safe enough. The -younger brooded on other things, and was sincerely careless of any -danger riding through the town might present. Neither was averse to -seeing how the stricken place might look. The younger, who, truly, -greatly influenced his brother, came with him primarily that he might -be at hand if the castle, which was prelatical, opened upon religion. - -It opened, but only in the person of the old nobleman. Sir Richard -sat a little to one side in the great hall where the armour hung and -listened as to three actors in the same play. The physician standing -by the fire faintly shrugged his shoulders. The nobleman ridiculed and -vituperated, the younger Puritan—for the elder was no match for his -lordship—came back with verse and Scripture. Finally the first was -reduced to “Insolent!” and a fine, foaming rage. Squire Carthew plucked -his brother’s sleeve. “No, no, Harry! Don’t go so far—” - -The younger Carthew made a stiff bow to his lordship and stood silent. -He had answered, he knew, boldly and well, and it was much to him now -to answer well and know it, to feel that he had been God Almighty’s -able champion. In subtle ways it tended to balance matters. It eased -the sore and fearful feeling within, the anguished sensation that he -was slipping, slipping, that the hand of Grace was trembling beneath -him.... - -The quarrel was too deep for any reconciliation. The old nobleman -advanced no olive branches. Instead, with a “Fare you well, gentlemen! -If this goes much further in England there’ll be hangings and -beheadings!” he rose from his cushioned chair and stalked from the -hall. Sir Richard offered food and canary, but the two Carthews -misliked his suavity, and the younger, at least, meant to keep no terms -of any kind. They refused entertainment. They must needs at once return -to Hawthorn. - -“As you please, gentlemen!—I am glad to know that the sickness has not -touched your neighbourhood.” - -The physician now came forward; they all stood about the great table -in the hall. “You are lucky if it reaches you not,” said the London -doctor. “I understand that you are not more than six miles away. But in -great cities I have seen it skip one parish and slay its hundreds all -around. For some reason the folk just there were more resistive.” - -A servant entering with a message from the old nobleman, he turned -aside to receive it. - -“Nay,” said the younger Carthew with sternness, “the plague falls where -God would have it fall, and falls not where he is willing to spare. -He saith to his Angel, ‘Smite here!’ or He saith, ‘Pass me by this -door!’—and where is the resistance of man that you prate of? As well -might the worm resist the master of the vineyard’s treading foot!” - -Sir Richard looked at him curiously. “Of course! of course! Poor -worm!” There fell a silence, then the last speaker, unthinkingly, -merely to make talk to the great door before which stood the visitors’ -horses, brought forward Aderhold’s presence in the town. “Hawthorn -hath played the Samaritan in one person—though, I believe, indeed, -that he lives beyond the village. You’ve given a good leech. I saw him -yesterday morning in the town, going from sick to sick.” - -The squire spoke. “You mean one Gilbert Aderhold? Yes, he is a leech. -But Hawthorn sent him not—” - -The London physician, returning at the moment, caught the name, -“Gilbert Aderhold!—What! I’ve wondered more than once what became of -the man—if, indeed, you speak of the same—” - -“A tall, quiet man,” said Sir Richard. “A thinker who has travelled—” - -“It has a sound of him,” said the physician. He somewhat despised the -two country gentlemen, so he addressed himself exclusively to Sir -Richard. As to what followed, it must be said that he spoke alike -without malice and without forethought. Indifferentist himself, dulled -by personal vanity and complacence of position, and with a knowledge -at least of the tolerant-mindedness of the person to whom he spoke, -he possibly took not into consciousness at all the very different -nature of the two who might be listening, nor realized that the man -of whom he spoke dwelled in their bailiwick and not in the town. At -any rate, he spoke on with vivacity. “A man of abilities who should -have risen—studied in Paris—was for a time in the Duke of —--’s -household. Then what must he do but grow atheist and begin to write -and teach! ‘The God of Isaac and Jacob, Isaac and Jacob’s idea of -God. God the vast abstraction, like and differing with all times and -peoples. The Bible not writ by the finger of God, but a book of Eastern -wisdom with much that is gold, and much that is not.—No Fall of Man -as therein told.—Salvation out of the depths of yourself and not by -gift of another.—No soul can be bathed clean by another’s blood.’—His -book,” said the physician, “was burned in an open place in Paris by -the common hangman, and he himself lay a long while in prison and was -hardly dealt with, nay, just escaped with life—which he might not -have done but for the Duke of —--, who got him forth from France -with a letter to Sir Robert Cecil, and—seeing that I had brought his -Grace up from an illness which he had when he was in England—one from -his secretary to me. But naturally neither Sir Robert nor I could do -aught—” - -Sir Richard, his brow clouded, stopped him with a gesture. “You caught -my interest and held me fast—but I should have checked you at once! -Now—” He bit his lip, his brows drawn together with deep vexation. - -The two men from Hawthorn were standing stone still. In the elder’s -face, at once stolid and peremptory, was only single-minded amazement -and wrath. What was this that Justice Carthew and all Hawthorn had been -harbouring? A Jesuit spy would have been bad enough—but atheist!—But -the younger was more complex, and in him a number of impulses were -working. He left it to the elder to speak, who did so, explosively. -“Atheist! No one hath thought well of the man of late—but atheist!—I -will promise you, doctor—I will promise you, Sir Richard—” - -“Nay,” said Sir Richard, no longer with suavity, “what I would have you -promise, that I know you will not!” He shook himself like a great dog. -“Unhappy!” - -The two Carthews rode down the castle hill and through the town where -people went dully to and fro with Fear in company. There rose the -pungent smell of burning wood, a church bell made a slow and measured -clangour. They passed between tall, gloomy, jutting houses, passed -the prison with the stocks and pillory, and the great church with the -sculptured portal, wound down to the river, and crossed the arched -bridge. Before them rolled the yet wintry country. Mounting a hill, -they saw on the horizon a purple-grey line that was Hawthorn Forest. - -The younger Carthew spoke. “It comes back to me.... That night at the -Rose Tavern when he so suddenly appeared beside old Hardwick.... Master -Anthony Mull, of Sack Hall, who was travelling with us, appeared to -recognize him and flew out against him.... Wait a moment!—his very -words will come back. He said—’Black sorcerer and devil’s friend!’” - -That afternoon a serving-man brought to a house at the foot of the -castle hill a letter to be passed on by a safe hand to the physician -from Hawthorn. It came into Aderhold’s hand as dusk was falling. He -broke the seal and read by the light of one of the street fires. The -letter—no lengthy one—came from his friend of the hawk and the silver -box. It told him what the London physician had betrayed, though without -malice, and to whom. It argued that it might be well to quit as quickly -as possible this part of the country, or even to go forth for a time -from England. It offered a purse and a horse; also, if it were wished -for, a letter of commendation to the captain of a ship then lying at -anchor at the nearest port, which captain, his own vessel being for -longer voyages, would get him passage in some other ship touching -at a Dutch port—“Amsterdam being to-day as safe as any place for a -thinker—where no place is safe.” The letter ended with “The younger -Carthew will move, no fear! Then, my friend, move first.”—An answer -was to be left at the house at the foot of the hill. - -Aderhold mechanically folded the letter and placed it in the breast of -his doublet. The fire was burning in an almost deserted street. Beside -it was a bench where an old tender of fires sat at times and nodded in -the warmth. He was not here now. Aderhold moved to the bench and sat -down. He sat leaning forward, his hands clasped and hanging, his head -bowed. After a time he sighed, straightened himself, and turning upon -the bench looked about him. It was a gusty twilight with now and again -a dash of rain. He looked up and down the solemn street. Some of the -houses stood dark, those who had lived in them dead or fled. Behind -the windows of others candles burned and shadows passed. This house he -knew was stricken, and this and that. Here it was a child, here a young -man or woman, here older folk. In more than one house there were many -cases, a whole family stricken.... As he sat he heard the first cart of -the night roll into the street, and a distant, toneless cry, “Bring out -your dead!” - -He rose and stood with a solemn and wide gesture of his hands. He -waited a moment longer by the fire, then turned and went from this -street into the next, where there lived behind his shop an old -stationer and seller of books with whom he had made acquaintance. Here -he begged pen and ink and paper, and when he had them, wrote, at no -great length, an answer to the letter in his doublet. The next morning -he left it at the house indicated, whence in due time it was taken by -the serving-man and carried to Sir Richard at the castle. The letter -spoke of strong gratitude, “but it befits not my calling to leave the -town now.” - -The days lagged by in the stricken place. Then, suddenly, the black -finger shot out again and touched a house beyond the midway farm, so -much nearer than it to Hawthorn Village.... A week of held breath -and the finger went forward again. This time it touched a house in -Hawthorn. - - - - -CHAPTER XII - -HERON’S COTTAGE - - -IT was early spring again, and on the fruit trees pale emerald buds -of yet unfolded leaves. The blackbirds came in flocks to the ploughed -fields. But this year there were many fields that were not ploughed; -dead men could not plough, nor those who had been to death’s door and -were coming halting, halting back. - -Joan sat in her kitchen, on a low stool by the hearth. The room was -clean, with shafts of sunlight slanting in. But her wheel was pushed -back into a corner, and there lacked other signs of industry. She sat -still and listless, bent over, her cheek resting upon her knees, and -with her forefinger she made idle marks and letters in the ashes. The -fire was smouldering out, the place seemed deadly still. - -There came a knock upon the door. She raised her head, and sat with a -frozen look, listening. After a minute the knock was repeated. Rising, -she moved noiselessly across the floor to the window, and, standing -so that she could not be seen, looked out. The rigour passed from her -face; she drew a breath of relief and went and opened the door. - -The sunshine flooded in and in the midst of it stood Aderhold. He -looked at her quietly and kindly. “I came again but to see if you were -well and lacked naught.” - -“I lack naught, thank you, sir,” said Joan. “And I am well—O me, O me, -I would that it had taken me, too! O father, father!” - -She leaned against the wall, shaken with dry sobs. The fit did not -last; she was resolute enough. She straightened herself. “I’ve done -what you told me to. Yesterday I washed and cleaned and let the sun in -everywhere, and burned in the room the powder you gave me. Everything -is clean—and lonely. No, I don’t feel badly anywhere. I feel terribly -strong, as though I would live to be an old woman.... I miss father—I -miss father!” - -“It looks so clean and bright,” said Aderhold, “and your cat purring -there on the hearth. Your father went very quickly, and without much -suffering. His presence will come back to you, and you will take -comfort in it. You will feel it in this room, and upon this doorstep, -and out here among the fruit trees, and under the stars at night.” - -“Aye,” said Joan, “I think it too. But now—” She stood beside him on -the doorstep, looking out past the budding trees to the gate and the -misty green twisted path that led at last to the village road. Overhead -drove a fleecy drift of clouds with islands of blue. “All last night -the countryside mourned low and wailed. It was the wind, but I knew it -was the other too! It is sad for miles and miles to be so woeful.” - -“The sickness is greatly lessening. By the time the spring is strongly -here it will be over and Hawthorn beginning to forget.—You have been -here now three days alone. Has no one come to enquire or help?” - -“Mother Spuraway from beyond the mill-race came. No one else.” - -“In a time like this all fear all. But presently friends will find out -friends again.” - -“It is not that way that I am lonely,” said Joan. “There are some that -I care not if they never come.” - -He had his round to go. The sickness in the town dwindling, he had -come back, when it broke over Hawthorn, to the Oak Grange. Since then -he had gone far and near, wherever it struck down the poorer sort. As -he turned from the cottage door, Joan stepped, too, upon the flagged -path, and they moved side by side toward the gate, between the lines -of green lance-heads the daffodils were thrusting above the soil. They -moved in silence, almost of a height, two simply, almost poorly dressed -figures, each with its load of sorrow and care for the morrow. And yet -they were not old, and about them was the low ecstatic murmur of winter -swiftening into spring. - -“Do you remember,” asked Aderhold, “that day when we chanced to meet in -the forest and Master Harry Carthew came upon us?” - -“Aye,” said Joan, “I remember.” - -“Since then we have neither met nor spoken together until last week -when your father was stricken and you watched for me coming from the -village.—And now to-day I come only for this moment and will come no -more.—Have you no close friends nor kindred?” - -“They are buried with father.... I mean to stay on here and spin flax -and keep myself. And if—I mean to stay.” Her hand went out to touch -the eglantine growing by the beehives. “I love it and I mean to stay.” - -Aderhold looked beyond at the wavy green path and the massed trees of -the forest. He, too, loved this country. He had thought much here—once -or twice the light had shone through. But he was ready now to go. Just -as soon as there was no more sick, just as soon as the plague was gone, -he meant to steal from the Oak Grange and Hawthorn countryside. He and -Joan came to the little gate, and he went out of it, then turning for -a moment looked back at the thatched cottage, the pleasant beehives, -the fruit trees that ere long would put forth a mist of bloom. Joan -stood with a sorrowful face, but grey-eyed, vital. Her hand rested -upon the worn wood. He laid his own upon it, lightly, for one moment. -“Good-bye,” he said, “Mistress Friendly-Soul!” - -She stood in the pale sunshine until he was gone from sight, then -turned and went back to her kitchen. She must bake bread; there was -nothing for her to eat in the cottage. She must get water from the -well. She took her well-bucket, went forth and brought it back -brimming. From the faggot pile she fed the fire, then brought to the -table coarse flour and other matters for the bread, mixed and worked, -moulded and set to bake. And all the time she tried to feel that her -father was sitting there, in the settle corner. She made the table -clear again, then looked at her wheel. But she did not feel like -spinning; her heart was burdened again; she sat down on the stool by -the fire and bowed her head in her arms. “Day after day and day after -day,” she said; “day after day and day after day.” She rocked herself. -“And a powerful man that I hate to come again and yet again to trouble -me, and father not here.... Day after day and day after day.... And -I know not why it is, but I have no friends. They’ve turned against -me, and I know not why.... Day after day—” She sat with buried head -and rocked herself slowly to and fro. Save for the youth in her form -and the thick, pale bronze of her braided hair, she might have seemed -Mother Spuraway, or Marget Primrose, or any other old and desolate -woman. She rocked herself, and the faggot burned apart, and the cat -stretched itself in the warmth. - -From outside the cottage came a thin calling. “_Joan! Joan! Oh, Joan!_” - -Joan lifted her head, listened a moment, then rose and opened the -door. “_Joan! Joan! Oh, Joan!_” She stepped without and saw who it -was,—Alison Inch and Cecily Lukin calling to her from the green path -well beyond the gate. They would come at first no nearer. The plague -had struck in the Lukin cottage no less than in Heron’s, and for weeks -it had closely neighboured Alison Inch and her mother. But Joan must -be made to feel comrades’ terror of her. “Joan! Joan! Have you got it -yet?—We want but to see if you’re living!” - -With a gesture of anger Joan turned to reënter the cottage. - -But Alison did not wish that. “Joan! Joan! We were laughing. We’re not -afraid if you don’t come very close.—I’ve got something to tell you. -See! I’m not afraid.” - -Alison came to the gate, Cecily with her. Joan no longer liked Alison, -and with Cecily she had never had much acquaintance. But they were -women and young, and the loneliness was terrible about her. She went -halfway up the path toward them. The grey and white cat came from the -cottage and followed her. - -Alison regarded her with a thin, flushed, shrewish face and an -expression lifted, enlarged, and darkened beyond what might have seemed -possible to her nature. But Alison had drunk deep from an acrid spring -that drew in turn from a deep, perpetual fount. She spoke in a thin and -cutting voice. “Watching and weeping haven’t taken the rose away.—What -are you going to do now, Joan?” - -“I do not think,” said Joan, “that it is necessary to tell thee.” She -looked past her to Cecily. “They say your sister died. I am sorry.” - -But Alison had put poison into Cecily’s mind. “Yes, she died. They do -say that you would not be sorry if more of us died. Why people like you -and—and Mother Spuraway should wish harm to us others—” - -“What are you talking of?” said Joan. “I wish no harm to any—” - -Cecily was an impish small piece with no especial evil in her save a -teasing devil. “Oh, they say that you and a black man understand each -other! Some boys told me—” - -“Nay, that’s naught, Cis!” said Alison impatiently. She came closer to -the gate, and Joan, as though drawn against her will, approached from -her side. “Joan—nay, don’t come any nearer, Joan—” - -“Yes?” - -“There’s one ill at the squire’s house. Ah!” cried Alison. “Do you look -joyful?” - -“No—no!” stammered Joan. - -Taken by surprise, shaken and unstable as she was to-day, she gave -back a step, lifted her hands to her forehead. As for Alison—Alison -had not expected Joan to look joyful. She had spoken, burning her own -heart, to make Joan feel the hot iron, knowing that the pang she gave -would not be lasting, for truly it was but one of the maidservants at -the great house that was stricken and not that person of overshadowing -importance. She had believed with all her heart that it would smite -Joan to the heart until she told her true—and now there had been in -her face an awful joy, though at once it had shrunk back and something -piteous had come instead. But it was the first look with which Alison -was concerned. There went through her a keen hope like a knife-blade. -Perhaps he no longer liked Joan!—perhaps that made Joan angry, hurting -her vanity—so, perhaps she would have liked to hear that he was sick -of the plague! Alison stood astare, revolving Joan’s look. - -Cecily, who had never come before so close to Heron’s cottage, gazed -about her. “And Katherine Scott says there’s something ‘no canny’ about -the bees in your beehives. She says she had them while you were away to -the castle, and they did naught for her and made, besides, her own bees -idle and sick. But she says they make honey for you, great combs of -it—” - -“There is none that is sick at the squire’s house,” said Alison in a -strange voice, “but Agnes, Madam Carthew’s woman. They’ve taken her -from the house and put her in a room by the stable, and the family goes -freely forth.—Why did you look as you were glad, Joan?” - -“If I did, God forgive me!” said Joan. “In the deep of me there is no -ill-wishing.—Presently, the leech says, it will be all safe here, as, -indeed, it’s clean and sun-washed and safe to-day. Then I hope you’ll -both come to see me—” - -Cecily gave a gibing, elfin laugh. “Are you going to live here all -alone—like a witch?” - -The grey and white cat had advanced beyond Joan and now stood upon the -sunny path between the daffodil points. What happened none of the three -saw; perhaps a dog crossed the track behind the two visitors, perhaps -the creature recognized human hostility—be that as it may, the cat -suddenly arched its back, its hair rose, its mouth opened. - -“Ah-h!” cried Cecily. “Look at her cat!” - -A curious inspiration, not of light, passed like a cloud-shadow -over Alison’s face. “It doesn’t like what you said, Cis! It’s her -familiar.—Come away! We’d best be going.” - -They turned. Lightning came against them from Joan’s grey eyes. “Yes, -go! And come not here again! Do you hear?—Come not here again!” Her -voice followed them up the green path. “Come not here again—” - -The next day she went to get wood from the edge of the forest. She -had gathered her load of faggots, and was sitting upon them, resting, -in her hand a fallen bird’s nest, when Will the smith’s son happened -that way. The two had known each other to speak to in a friendly way -for many a year; it used to be that, coming or going from the Grange, -he might at any time stop for a minute before the cottage for a crack -with old Heron and maybe with Joan herself. That time had come to an -end with Joan and her father’s going to the castle; when they came back -he had been, as it were, afraid of new graces and manners. Moreover, -old Master Hardwick had presently died, and so Will left the employment -of the Grange and had little need any more to come and go by Hawthorn -Forest. It might be that, save at church, they had not seen each other -for months. Moreover, he had been away to the nearest port. - -Now he greeted her with friendliness and an honest-awkward speech -of sorrow for old Heron’s death. “He was a good man and, fegs! so -learned!—Am sorry for thee, Joan. And what will’t do now?” - -Joan turned the grey and empty nest in her hands. “I do not know,” she -said drearily; then, with a backward fling of her shoulders and a lift -of courage, “The cottage’s mine. And I always sell the flax I spin. -I’ll bide and spin and keep the place.” - -Will shook his head compassionately. “A lass like thou—! In no time -thou’dst be talked of and called ill names. Either thou must take -service or marry—” - -Joan turned upon him heavy-lidded grey orbs. “Why should I marry or be -a serving-woman if I wish neither, and can keep myself?—Oh, I like not -the way we’ve made this world!” She turned the nest again. “This thing -of ill names—Well, ill names do not kill.” - -Will stood, biting a piece of thorn. “You’d see how it would turn out. -No one would believe—” - -He looked at her with rustic meditativeness. He was slow and -country-living; he had no great acquaintance with Alison or Cecily, -and it had never occurred to him to mark Master Harry Carthew, where -the squire’s brother rode or whom his looks pursued. He had heard of -the vintner in the town, and had dimly supposed that Joan would marry -him, or maybe the new huntsman or some other fine-feathered person at -the castle. But now the plague had swept the town, and the vintner -might be of those taken—and here was old Heron gone. He looked at her -again, and the hand that held the piece of thorn against his lips began -to shake a little. It occurred to him more strongly than it had done -before that she was a fair woman—and then, Heron’s cottage. There was -a tiny plot of ground, the cow, some poultry. As things went, she had -a good dowry. Will the smith’s son might go farther and fare worse. -It was not the right time, all Hawthorn being so gloomy and everybody -afraid, and his own heart knocking at times against his side with -fear. But it wouldn’t hurt just to drop a hint. He moistened his lips. -“Joan,” he said; “Joan—” - -And then, by the perversity of her fortune, Joan herself shook him from -this base. She lifted sombre eyes, still turning the little grey nest -about in her hands. “Why do you think we had the plague? The minister -preached that it was sent against the town for its false doctrine, and -we gave thanks that we were not as the town.... And then in a little -while it was upon us, and my father, who was a good man, took it and -died....” - -Gloom that had lifted this bright afternoon on the forest edge settled -again. Will the smith’s son had a strong taste for the supernatural, -all the emotional in him finding that vent. It could grow to light up -with strange lightnings and transform every humdrum corner of his mind. -He liked to discuss these matters and feel a wind of terror prick his -temples cold. He spoke oracularly, having, indeed, listened to talk at -the sexton’s the night before. “There’s always an Evil Agent behind any -pest, or a comet or a storm that wrecks ships or blows down chimneys. -At times God uses the Evil Agent to punish the presumptuous with—as -He might give Satan leave to spot with plague the town over yonder, -seeing that if it could it would have the old mass-priests back! And at -other times He gives the Evil Agent leave to prick and try his chosen -people that they may turn like a wauling babe and cling the closer to -Him. And again there may be one patch of weed in the good corn and -Satan couching and holding his Sabbat there. In which case God will -send plagues of Egypt, one after the other, until every soul wearing -the Devil’s livery is haled forth.—Now,” said Will, and he laid it -off with the sprig of thorn, “Hawthorn is for the pure faith of the -Holy Scriptures, so we haven’t the plague for the reason the town hath -it.—Again, put case that so we’re to love the Lord the more. Now -Hawthorn and all to the north of it is known for religion. I’ve been -a traveller,” said Will with unction, “and I know how we’re looked -on, clear from here to the sea, and held up to the ungodly! Master -Clement’s got a name that sounds to the wicked like the trump of doom -and Master Harry Carthew isn’t far behind him—What did you say?” - -“I said naught,” said Joan. - -Will closed his exposition. “Now it may be that God wisheth to prick -up Hawthorn to fresh zeal, and, indeed, the sexton holds that it is so -that Master Clement interprets the matter. But it seemed to me and the -tinker, who was there talking, too, that the third case is the likelier -and that there are some ill folk among us!” Will dropped the bit of -thorn. “It’s the more likely because there’s another kind of mischief -going around and growing as the plague dies off. I know myself of three -plough-horses gone lame in one night, and Hodgson’s cow dying without -rhyme or reason, and a child at North-End Farm falling into fits and -talking of a dog that runs in and out of the room, but no one else can -see it. The tinker”—Will spoke with energy—“the tinker has come not -long since over the border from Scotland. He says that if Hawthorn was -Scotland we’d have had old Mother Spuraway and maybe others in the -pennywinkis and the caschielawis before this!” - -Joan rose and lifted her bundle of faggots to her shoulders. The grey -bird-nest she set between two boughs of the thorn tree. “What are the -pennywinkis and the caschielawis?” - -“The one’s your thumbscrew,” said Will, “and the other’s a hollow iron -case where they set your leg and build a fire beneath.” - -Joan turned her face toward the cottage. Her old acquaintance walked -beside her. It was afternoon and there was over everything a tender, -flickering, charming light. It made the new grass emerald, of the -misting trees veil on veil of soft, smiling magic. Primroses and -violets bloomed as though dropped from immortal hands. The blue vault -of air rose height on height and so serene and kind.... - -Joan spoke in a smothered voice. “I would believe in a good God.” - -The young countryman beside her had gone on in mind with the tinker and -his talk. “What did you say, Joan?” - -“I said naught,” said Joan. - - - - -CHAPTER XIII - -HAWTHORN CHURCH - - -TOWN and village and all the country roundabout were growing clean of -the plague. Day by day the evil lessened, the sickness stole away. It -left its graves, and among those whose loss was personal its mood of -grief. At large there was still a kind of sullen fear, a tension of the -nerves, a readiness to attend to any cry of “Wolf!” The wolf might come -no more in the guise of the plague, but there were other damages and -terrors. All Hawthorn region was in a mood to discover them. - -It came Sunday. The danger, at least, of congregating together seemed -to have rolled away. Comfort remained, comfort of the crowd, of feeling -people warm about you, gloomy comfort of “Eh, sirs!” and shakings of -the head. Hawthorn, village and neighbourhood, flocked to church. -Going, the people drew into clusters. The North-End Farm folk had a -large cluster, and there the shaking of the head was over the possessed -boy. But the widow whose cow was dead and the waggoner whose horses -were lamed had their groups, too, and the largest group of all came -compactly from the lower end of the village, past the green and the -pond and the stocks and the Sabbath-closed ale-house, with the tinker -from Scotland talking in the midst of it. - -Dark stone, gaunt and ancient, rather small than large, Hawthorn Church -rose among yew trees. Within was barer than without. What of antique -carving could be broken away was broken away, what could be whitewashed -was whitewashed, what of austerity could be injected was injected. The -Act of Uniformity loomed over England like a writing in the sky; there -must be and was use of the book of Common Prayer. But parishes minded -like Hawthorn used it with all possible reserves. Where matters could -be pared they were pared to the quick; all exfoliation was done away -with. As far as was possible in an England where Presbyterianism yet -sat in the shadow of the Star Chamber and the Independents had not -arisen, idolatrousness was excluded. Only the sermon was not pared. -Sunday by Sunday minister and people indemnified themselves with the -sermon.—You could not speak against the King; except in metaphor you -could not speak against the Apostolic Succession; there were a number -of things you could not speak against unless you wished to face gaol -or pillory or worse. Because of this the things that you could speak -against were handled with an added violence. The common outer foe -received the cudgellings you could not bestow within the house. The -Devil was mightily dealt with in pulpits such as this of Hawthorn, -the Devil and his ministers. The Devil was invisible; even the most -materializing mind did not often get a glimpse of him, though such a -thing was possible and had of course happened: witness Martin Luther -and others. But his ministers—his ministers! They were many and -palpable.... - -Hawthorn Church was filled. They sat very still, men and women and -children. They were peasants and yeomen, small tradespeople, a very few -of the clerkly caste, one or two families of gentry. The only great -enclosed pew was that belonging by prescription to Carthew House. The -squire, the squire’s wife, his young son, and the squire’s brother sat -there, where the force of the sermon could reach them first. Quite -at the back of the church sat Gilbert Aderhold, a quiet, dark figure -beside an old, smocked farmer. Joan sat where she had been wont to sit -with her father, halfway down the church, just in front of Alison Inch -and her mother. It was a dark day, the air hot, heavy, and oppressive, -drawing to a storm. - -Master Thomas Clement came into the pulpit wearing a black gown. He -opened his Geneva Bible and laid it straight before him. He turned -the hourglass, then lifting his hands to the lowering sky he smote -them together, and in a loud, solemn and echoing voice read from the -book before him, “_If there arise among you a prophet or a dreamer of -dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder. And the sign or the wonder -come to pass whereof he spake to thee, saying, Let us go after other -gods, that thou hast not known, and let us serve them.... That prophet -or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death; because he hath spoken -to turn you away from the Lord your God.... And all Israel shall hear -and fear and shall do no more any such wickedness as this is among -you...._” - -“_... There shall not be found among you any one that ... useth -divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a -consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer._” - -He ceased to read, and with another gesture of his long, thin hands, -began to preach. He had a peculiar power and calibre had Master Thomas -Clement. He stood in his black gown, a small man with a pale face; then -his dire vision came upon him and it was as though his form gained -height and dilated. He burned like a flame, a wind-tossed flame, -burning _blue_. When he spoke his words came with a rushing weight. -His figure bent toward the people, his lean hands quivered above his -head, gesturing against the dark concave of the roof. The roof might -have been an open, stormy sky, the pulpit a rock upon some plain of -assemblage, the preacher a gaunt, half-clad Israelite shrilling out -to the Hebrew multitude the rede of their lawgivers. _Thou shalt not -suffer doubt to live! Thou shalt endure no speech of more or other -paths than this one. He that differeth, he shall die!_ - -But it was not Sinai and some thousands of years ago and an Asiatic -tribe struggling back from Egypt to some freehold of its own, or -Asiatic lawgivers building a careful theocracy. It was Europe,—it was -England and the seventeenth century,—and still men like this stood in -fiery sincerity and became mouthpieces for that people and its history -and its laws. The order to Judah and Simeon and Levi rolled through -the ages like never-cooling lava, withering and whelming vineyards of -thought. _Thou shalt not suffer doubt to live. He that differeth, he -shall die!_—And a thousand thousand pale shapes might rise to the -inner eye and speak to the inner ear. “_We died._” - -Aderhold sat still, far back in Hawthorn Church. In his own mind he -saw that he was on the edge of the abyss. He doubted much if he would -escape.... The old farmer sitting, blue-smocked, beside him, his -watery eyes fixed upon the minister, broke now and again into a mutter -of repetition and comment. “Aye, aye! The misbeliever to perish for -idolatry.... Of course he blasphemes—the misbeliever blasphemes.... -Aye, aye! ‘Why,’ and ‘Wherefore,’ the Devil’s own syllables.... Aye, -aye! Unbelief and sorcery go together.... Aye, now we’re at fire in -this world and everlasting, lasting fire to come!” - -The preacher had before him a people who had come through a narrow -strait and a valley of the shadow, gathered together in a mood of -strained nerves, of twitches and starts aside, of a readiness to -take panic. The day was dark with heat and oppression, a sense of -hush before tempest. It was a day on which it was easy to awaken -emotion. The faces of the people showed pale in the dusk, breathing -became laboured. At last it grew that men and women looked aside with -something like a shudder and a sigh in the dimness. It was as though -they looked to see a serpent’s head, fanged and crowned, lifting itself -in the gloom from monstrous coils. Aderhold saw the slow turning of -eyes in his direction. - -He thought swiftly. He had served many in this congregation. Since, -in the winter-time, his eyes had been opened, he knew of the drifting -talk of his hoarding gold, of his practising alchemy there in the dark -Oak Grange, alchemy, and perhaps worse. Even after his return from the -plague-stricken town, even in his going through Hawthorn countryside -from house to house where there were sick, helping, serving, even then -he had seen doubtful looks, had known his aid taken hurriedly, as it -were secretly and grudgingly. But all had not done so. There had been -those too simple and too suffering and sorrowful for that, and there -had been those whose minds seemed not to have taken the dye. There -were some in this church of whom, in the years he had dwelt in this -country, he had grown fond; folk that of their own bent felt for him -liking and kindness.... But he did not deceive himself. He knew of none -that would stand before this parching and withering wind. Heretofore -the talk might have been idle talk, but now it was evident that Master -Clement had at his shaken finger-ends the history in France of Gilbert -Aderhold. Friends! By what multitude of written words, of hearsay and -legend—by what considerable amount of personal observation did he -know how friends fell away from the denounced dreamer of dreams!... -Poor friends! He felt no rise of bitterness against them. They would -not have fallen away in physical battle; they would have stood many a -strain, perhaps all but this. This was not to cow the blood; it was to -cow mind and the immortal spirit. To face for a friend a wolf, a lion, -or an earthly angered King, that was well!—but to face for a friend an -angered God, to save him not from hell-fire and to be yourself whelmed, -remediless, for eternity! Few there were who could inwardly frame the -question, “Is He angered?” or “What is He that can be so angered?” or -“You who would silence this man with the silence of death, are you -beyond doubt the spokesmen of God and Eternity? Are you, after all, -_God’s_ Executioners?” But they said that they were, and the human mind -was clay to believe.... Aderhold looked over the church and thought he -saw none who would not be terrified aside. - -Well! he asked those questions and other questions. Mind and moral -nature rose in him and stood. But he knew that his body would betray -him if it could. Highly strung, very sensitive to pain, he possessed -an imagination and memory vivid to paint or to bring back all manner -of pangs and shrinkings of the earthly frame. No detail of any Calvary -but in some wise he knew and feared it. He felt the cold sweat dew his -temples and break out upon the backs of his hands. He felt the nausea -that numbed and withered the brain and brought the longing for death.... - -Not in the beginning, the middle, or the ending of his white-heated -discourse did the minister call the name of Gilbert Aderhold or say -the Oak Grange. The invective, the “Lo, this is he that troubleth -Israel!” only drew in circles, closer, closer, until there was no one -there who did not know who was meant. The tremendous accusation was -of Atheism, but in and out there tolled like a lesser bell, _Sorcery! -Sorcery!_ The withdrawing light, the hot, small, vagrant breaths of -air, announcers of the onward rolling storm, the darkened hollow of -the building with the whitewashed walls glimmering pale, the faces -lifted from the benches, the square Hall pew, the high pulpit and the -black sounding-board and the black figure with the lifted arms and the -death-like shaken hands, and in the back of the church, all knew, even -if they could not see him, the man who had made pact with the Devil.... -A woman fainted; a child began a frightened, whimpering crying. The -sands had quite run out from the upper half of the hourglass.... - -Aderhold, close to the door, was the first of the congregation to -step from the church into the open air. It would seem that those near -him held back, so as to let the fearful thing forth and out. The -churchyard path stretched bare before him, between the yews to the -mossed gate, and so forth from the immediate pale. There came as yet no -challenge or molestation. He had looked for this; when all had risen -and he with them, it had been with an inward bracing to meet at the -door a writ of arrest. He looked to see the Hawthorn constable. But he -was not at the door, or out upon the path, or at the gate.... The storm -was at hand, with clouds heavy and dark as the yew trees and with a -mutter of thunder. As he reached the village street, raindrops touched -his face. Behind him the churchyard was astir with people, murmuring -and dark. He wrapped his cloak about him, pulled his hat down against -the rain, and faced homeward. Almost immediately, the church being at -the village end, the cloud-shadowed country was about him. - -He walked rapidly for half a mile, then halted and stood in the wind -and rain, trying to think it out. It occurred to him that he might turn -back through the fields and passing the village come out on the highway -and strike southward to the town and the castle. He knew not if his -friend of the hawk were yet at the castle. And if he were not?—and if -he were?... - -There was that at the Oak Grange which must be considered. His -book—there in the quiet room behind the cupboard’s oaken door, all his -writing lying there—that which he was trying to put down. It turned -him decisively from the town and the bare chance of reaching help. -His book was his lover and playmate and child. He put himself into -motion again and went on toward the Grange, beneath the tempestuous -sky, through the wind and the rain.... When he came within Hawthorn -Forest there arrived a sudden lull. The oaks stood still around -him, the raindrops fringing branch and twig and unfolding tufts of -velvet leaves. Overhead the clouds drove apart, there came a gleam of -intensest blue. As he moved through the forest it took on an ineffable -beauty. When he came to the edge and to the stream murmuring over its -pebbly strand there was a great rainbow. He crossed the footbridge and -went on by the fairy oak. - -Within the still old house was none but himself. Dorothy and the boy, -her nephew, had been there in Hawthorn Church. They would come on but -slowly; indeed, they might have stopped at a cousin’s on the way; -indeed, he knew not if, terrified and at a loss, they would come back -to the Grange at all. They might, perhaps, have waited to beseech the -minister’s and the squire’s protection and advice. There was a fire -in the kitchen. Aderhold, spreading his cloak to dry, knelt upon the -hearth, crouched together, bathed by the good warmth. But even while -the light and comfort played about him there came into his mind, -suddenly, with sickening strength, a thing that he had witnessed in his -childhood, here in England. Again he saw a woman burning at a stake.... -He shuddered violently, rose and left the room. - -Upstairs he unlocked the cupboard and took from it a heap of closely -covered manuscript. It rested upon the table before him.... He stood -for some moments with a bowed head; presently his hand stole to the -leaves and caressed them. He knew what he should do; he should take -the whole down to the kitchen and lay it in the fire. Since the -warning of the man with the hawk he had known that that was what -should be done. The knowledge had lain upon his heart at night. “I -will do it to-morrow,” and again, “I will do it to-morrow.” The only -other thing was to hide it in some deep and careful place, whence, if -ever there came escape and security, he might recover it, or where, -long years after he was dead, men might find it and read it. He had -thought of digging beneath the fairy oak—but the fire, he knew, was -the safest.... He gathered all together and with it in his hands went -downstairs. He thought that he had decided upon the fire, but going, he -had a vision of a mattock and spade resting behind an outhouse door. -Now would be the time to dig, now at once! As his foot touched the oak -flooring of the hall there sounded a heavy knock upon the door. It was -not locked or barred; even as he stood the one uncertain instant, it -swung inward to admit the men who had followed him from Hawthorn. - - - - -CHAPTER XIV - -NIGHT - - -THE storm that had broken in the early afternoon regathered. The clouds -hung low and black, the wind whistled, the rain came in gusts, now -and again there was lightning and thunder. It was so dark in Heron’s -cottage, behind the deep, dripping eaves, that Joan moving to and fro -seemed a shadow among shadows. The hearth glowed, but she held her hand -from making a bright light with fresh faggots. Her mood was not for the -dancing flame. - -What it was for she knew not. She only knew that she was suited by -the rain that dashed, by the bending fruit trees, striking the thatch -with mossed boughs, the solemn roll of the thunder, the darkness and -solitude. She paced the room, her arms lifted and crossed behind her -head. At last a bit of unburned wood caught and sent up forked flames. -Light and shadow danced about the walls. The grey and white cat came -and walked with Joan, rubbing against her skirt. - -The thunder rolled. Outside, the murk of the day thickened toward -evening. A hand fell across the door, then pressed the latch. The -door swung inward; there was a vision of a muffled figure, behind it -wind-tossed trees and up-towering clouds lit by lightning. - -“Who is it?” Joan cried sharply; then, as the man let drop the cloak he -had been holding across his face, “Master Carthew!...” - -The firelight, sinking, left only the smouldering coals and the room -almost dark. Joan, moving swiftly across the room, seized fresh brands -and threw them upon the old. A flame leaped up; the place was fairly -light again. She turned upon him. “To come here—to come here—” - -“Aye,” he answered, “to come here.” He unclasped his great cloak and -let it drop on the settle, took off his steeple-crowned hat and set -it on the cloak. He stood out, dark-clothed, plain as Master Clement -himself in what he wore, with short-cut hair, with handsome features, -haggard, flushed, and working. “Do you know whence I have come? I have -come from leading men to the Oak Grange where they took and bound that -atheist there and carried him away to gaol. You’ll walk no more with -him in Hawthorn Forest.” - -Joan drew a heavy, painful breath. “I walked little with him in -Hawthorn Forest. But when my father took the plague he came to him. He -is a good man! Aye, I was in church and heard Master Clement—” - -“Nay, I think that you walked much. But now you will walk no more.” He -came nearer to her. “Joan, put that Satan’s servant from out your mind! -Turn instead to one who sinneth truly and puts oftentimes in peril his -immortal soul, but is at least no misbeliever and denier of God’s -Word. Joan—Joan!” - -He tried to take her in his arms. She was strong and broke from him. -Behind her was a shelf with some pewter jugs and dishes and small -articles of use. She put up her arm and snatched from it a good and -keen hunting-knife; then stood, breathing quickly, the firelight -reddening the blade in her hand. - -He gave a harsh and forced laugh. “Put it down, Joan! I did not mean to -fright thee. I came to persuade—” - -“Nay, I’ll keep it by me,” said Joan. “Persuade me to what? To feel -love for you? That, Master Carthew, you cannot do! But you could make -me feel gratitude—” - -“If I took hat and cloak and went from out your door?” - -“Aye, just.” - -“I cannot.... No man ever loved as I love you.... Here, this dusk, this -Sabbath.—Think if I am in earnest.... Joan, Joan! If I lose for thee -my immortal soul—” - -She made a sound of anger and contempt. “Oh, thy little immortal soul! -Be but mortal—and just!” The tears rose in her grey eyes. “See what -you will do to me! Say that you were seen coming here—say that any -of the times you have waited for me, waylaid me, met me against my -will, you were watched—we were seen together.... You are a man and -a gentleman and a great man in this country. It will not harm you. -But Joan Heron—but Joan Heron—it will harm her! It will provide her -misery for all her days!” - -Carthew struck his hand against the settle. “Is not all my name and -future risked? I am not of the old England, nor of to-day’s careless -and idolatrous England. My world is the world of the new England, of -the forces of the Lord mustering upon the straight and narrow path -where there is no room for Satan’s toys! And if I turn aside to Babylon -and the flesh and its madness, and if my turning becomes known—Joan, -Joan, you know not how great is my risk—even my worldly risk! As for -the other—as for my risk of God’s hatred and damnation—but I will -not speak of that.... Enough that I am here, and that to hold you -consenting in my arms would even all out and make my lead gold and my -torment bliss! Joan—if you would but love me and feel how the risk is -outweighed! As for security, we can manage that. Many another pair has -managed that. To-day—here—with the wind and rain keeping all within -doors.... I rode with the men some way toward the town, and then I -left them, saying there were matters at home that needed. When they -were out of sight, I turned through the fields and went up the stream -that was all solitary, until I was over against the Oak Grange and the -forest all around me. Then I turned and rode here through the forest, -and fastened my horse in a hollow out there where none may see him.... -Joan, it is like a desert all about us—or like Paradise garden. Joan, -Joan, I love you! Joan, have pity!” - -There came an access of lightning with thunder and a prolonged -whistling of the wind. In the warring light and darkness of the room, -Carthew, as though the final spring of restraint had snapped, came -close to her, put his arms about her. The lightning blazed again, and -by it both saw with distinctness a man and woman standing without, -their faces close to the window. In the darkness after the flash, -they left it and came on to the cottage door, but as yet did not -knock. Within the room, Carthew, sobered, the colour ebbing from -his face, only one consideration pouring in upon his mind, released -Joan and caught from the settle hat and cloak. There was a second -outward-opening door, giving upon the bit of garden behind the cottage, -leading in its turn to the forest. He looked toward it. She nodded, -“Yes, yes, go!” He came close to her, moving noiselessly and speaking -low, “Do you think they saw—saw at all?” - -She shook her head. “I do not know.” - -“It was too dusk within. I do not think they saw. Keep counsel, Joan, -for thy own sake if not for mine.” - -The two without knocked. Carthew crossed the floor without sound, -opened the forest-facing door, and with a gesture of farewell vanished. -There was a continuous noise of wind and rain; what daylight was left -and the lightning were all without; it might truly be doubted if one -glancing through the window could either see or hear, the interior was -so dusky, the voice of wind and wet so continuing. Joan, with a long, -shuddering sigh, put down the hunting-knife, and going to the door -opened it. The two who stood there were Will the smith’s son and his -mother. They had, it seemed, the weather clearing, walked to see the -forester’s people; then, the clouds returning, they had taken their -leave to hurry home. But the storm had overtaken them—and they had -thought to take refuge until the rain lessened in Heron’s cottage. But -they did not know—they thought they had better go on. - -“Come in and warm and dry yourselves,” said Joan. - -They came in hesitatingly. They looked around them, confused and -doubtful. They sat on the settle by the fire and stared at the grey and -white cat. Will was trembling, and it could not be from the wet and -chill, for he was used to that. - -His mother was of stouter mental make. “Were you alone, Joan? It seemed -to us there was somebody else—” - -“Why, who else,” asked Joan, “could there have been?” She looked around -her. “The shadows moving along the walls do look like people.” - -“It looked,” said Will, in a strange voice, “as though you and a shadow -were locked and moving together. It looked like a tall black man.” He -stared at the fire and at the grey and white cat. A fine, bead-like -moisture that was not rain clung to his brow, beneath his yellow elf -locks. - -“No, no black man,” said Joan. “I myself fancy all kinds of things in a -storm.” - -Her woman guest was silent. She sat with bead-like blue eyes now on -Joan, now upon the kitchen from wall to wall. But Will’s perturbation -remained. The events of the day, North-End Farm talk and the tinker’s -talk, the atmosphere of heat and storm, church and the denunciation of -his old master’s kinsman, the physician with whom at the Oak Grange he -had himself been in daily contact, the talk at the forester’s which -had been of the marvellous, indeed, and the evident power of Satan; -afterwards the dark wood, the lightning, rain, and thunder, and then -the momentary spectral vision through the window, which now, it seemed, -was naught—all wrought powerfully upon his unstable imagination. There -flowed into his mind his long-ago adventure with the wolf that ran -across the snow-field, and was trapped that night but never found ... -but old Marget Primrose was found with her ankle cut. The remembrance -dragged with it another—he was again with that same physician sitting -his horse before the portal of the great church in the town—the -carvings in the stone struck with almost material force back into his -mind that was edged already with panic. _Witches and devils...._ And -the tinker’s talk of how Scotland was beset, and Satan buying women, -old and young.... He had always thought of witches being old like -Marget Primrose or like Mother Spuraway—but, of course, they could be -young.... The forester’s wife, that afternoon, had said something—it -hummed back through his head. Her beehives were bewitched by Joan -Heron’s beehives.... - -His mind was tinder to every superstitious spark. With a whistling -breath and a shuffling of the feet, he rose from the settle. “We’re dry -and warm now, mother.—Let’s be getting home.” - -His mother, it seemed, was ready. Her parting with Joan was somewhat -tight-lipped and stony. “Seeing that you are alone now in the world -’tis a pity you ever had to leave living by the town and the castle! -There were fine strange doings there that you miss, no doubt—” - -The two went out into the declining day. The rain had ceased, but the -wind blew hard, driving vast iron-grey clouds across the sky. However, -since the thunder had rolled away, one could talk. As soon as the two -were out of the cottage gate and upon the serpentine green path, wet -beneath the wet trees, they began to talk. - -“It was something,” said Will; “and then when we got within, it was -nothing.... Mother!” - -“Aye, aye,” said his mother. “It wasn’t to be seen plain. But she was -not by herself.” - -“Mother ... the tinker saith that the Scotch witches all have -familiars. A man or a woman or sometimes children see such and such -an one walking or talking with a tall black man, but when they get -close there is only, maybe, a dog, or a cat, or sometimes a frog or a -mouse.... But the witch-prickers always find the witch’s mark where the -Devil that is her familiar sucks.... And then the witch confesses and -tells how the Devil is now tall and black like himself and now shrinks -into the small beast, and how by his power she can herself change her -shape.”—Will shivered and his eyes glanced fearfully about. “Mother, -do you think that there was something evil there?” - -His mother looked steadily before her with beady blue eyes. “I don’t -know what I think. I think there was somebody or something there that -she didn’t want seen or known about—but where it went, or he went.... -Don’t you think any more that you might marry her.” - -Back in Heron’s cottage Joan sat crouched before the fire. She fed -it now constantly with wood so as to make the whole room light. A -determination was taking form in her mind. To-morrow she would walk to -the town, and climb the castle hill, and ask for Mistress Borrow at the -castle. The old housekeeper had called her a pagan, but natheless she -had been fond of Joan and Joan of her.... Now to go to the castle, and -find her in the cheerful housekeeper’s room and to sit on the floor -beside her with head, maybe, in her lap, and free a burdened heart and -mind and ask counsel.... She would do it. She would start early—at -sunrise. The vigour of her purpose lightened her heart; she rose to -her feet, and going to the window, looked out. It was quite dark. The -storm had died away, but the sky was filled with torn and hurrying -clouds. Now hidden, now silvering cloud and earth, a half-moon hurried -too. Joan stood gazing, her face lifted. She thought of her father. At -last she raised her arm, closed the casement, and drew across it its -linen curtain. From the cupboard she took a candlestick and candle and -lighted the latter with a splinter from the hearth. She set it upon the -table, and going to the main door turned the large key in the lock. -This done, she moved across the kitchen floor to the small door giving -upon the back. The key was lost of this, but there was a heavy bar. She -had lifted this to slip it into place when the door, pushing against -her, opened from without. Carthew reëntered the room. - -Joan uttered a cry less of fright than of sudden and great anger. -“Beware,” she cried, “that I do not kill you yet! Begone from this -place!” - -He shook his head. “No. I have watched all away. Who comes, after -curfew, of a wet and wild night, to your cottage? No good folk of this -region, I am sure. So we’re alone now, Joan, at last!” - -He made a movement past her. She saw what he was after, and, lithe and -quick herself, she was there first. She had the knife again.... They -stood facing each other in the lit room, and Joan spoke. - -“Thou hypocrite!” she said; “thou pillar of Hawthorn Church and -dependence of God on high and Master Clement! Thou hope of England! -Thou searcher-out of iniquity and punisher of wrong-doing! Thou -perceiver of high things and the meaning of the world! Thou judge and -master in thy own conceit!—Thou plain and beast-like man, who wantest -but one thing and knows not love, but lust—” - -He caught her in his arms. He was strong, but so was she. They -struggled, swaying, their shadows, in firelight and candlelight, -towering above them. They breathed hard—they uttered broken words, -ejaculations. He was in the grasp of the brute past; she struggled with -the energy of despair and hatred. She felt that he gained. Need taught -her cunning. She seemed to give in his clasp, then, in the moment when -he was deceived, she gathered all her strength, tore her arm free, and -struck with the hunting-knife. - -The blade entered his side. She drew it out, encrimsoned. They fell -apart, Carthew reeling against the wall. The colour ebbed from his -face. He felt the bleeding, and thrusting a scarf within his doublet, -strove to stanch it. As he leaned there, he kept his eyes upon her. -But with the suddenness of the lightning their expression had changed. -Wrath and defeat and shame were written in them; desire still, but -mixed now with something baleful, with something not unlike hate. The -bleeding continued. He felt a singing in his ears and a mist before his -eyes. - -With the ice of the new mood came a sense of the peril of his position. -Did he swoon here from loss of blood—grow so weak that he could not -get away—be found here when day came—. The scandal flared out in -letters of fire before him. He saw the face of Master Clement, and -the faces of other and more powerful men of the faction, religious -and political, with which he was becoming strongly identified.... He -must get away—get home—framing some story as he went. His horse was -near—the streaming blood seemed less. - -Joan stood like a dart, in her face blended relief and horror. They -stared each at the other. - -“Do you remember,” said Carthew in a hollow voice, “in the forest -there, I said that love might turn to hate? Beware lest it has turned!” - -“You may hate me,” said Joan. “You never loved me.” - -He took his eyes from her and moving haltingly to the door opened it. -His horse was close outside, fastened within the small enclosure. -Through the dark oblong, by the light of the half-moon, she saw him -mount. He gathered up the reins, he held also by the horse’s mane. His -face looked back at her for a moment, a ghastly, an enemy’s face. Then -there was only the mournful night and Heron’s cottage, thatch-roofed, -sunk among blossoming fruit trees from which the raindrops dripped, -dripped. - - - - -CHAPTER XV - -NEXT DAY - - -AT sunrise she shut the cottage door behind her, locked it, and put the -key in a hiding-place under the eaves, then went down the path between -the daffodils and out of the little gate. She had a basket upon her arm -and within it in a blue jar a honeycomb for a gift to Mistress Borrow. -It was a morning fresh and fragrant, the grass diamonded with last -night’s rain, the tree-tops veiled with mist, distant cocks crowing. -When she came upon the road the sun was drinking up the mist; it was -going to be a beautiful day. - -She walked for some distance toward the village, but at a point where -she saw Carthew House among the trees and the church yews were growing -large before her, she turned into a path that would take her through -the fields and bring her out upon the highway with the village left -behind. She did not wish to go through the village, she did not wish to -pass Alison Inch’s door, she did not wish to come near to Carthew House. - -She walked between the springing grain, and through a copse where a -thrush was singing, and by a stream that was the same that murmured -past the Oak Grange, and so at last came back to the highway. She -looked back. The village roofs, the church tower, rested dark against -the blue sky; light curls of smoke were rising and a great bird sailed -overhead. - -Before her, over hill and dale, ran the road to the town. She shifted -her basket to the other arm and walked on in the golden morning. Now -she was by nature courageous, and by nature also a lover of light and -air, of form and colour, of diverse motion and the throb of life. In -her soul the whole round earth mirrored itself as alive, and, despite -black moods and fits of madness, as dominantly good and fair. What of -sorrow, gloom, and care had of late clung about her, what of terror -and horror the happening of the evening before had left with her, -slowly lessened, grew diaphanous in the sunlight and open country. The -road began to entertain her, and there came sweet wafted memories of -the castle wood, of how fondly she and her father and uncle had lived -together and understood one another and liked life, and of all the -pleasant doings when the great family were at the castle. Music hummed -in her ears again, the figures of the masque filed across the green -sward. - -In the fresh morning there was more or less meeting and passing on -the road. A shepherd with a flock of sheep overtook her, and she -stood under an elm to let them by. The shepherd whistled clearly, the -sheep kept up their plaintive crying, pushing and jostling with their -woolly bodies, their feet making a small pattering sound. “To market! -To market!” said the shepherd. “Are you for the market, too, pretty -maid?” Farther on she overtook in her turn two or three children going -on some errand and walked with them awhile. They wanted to know what -was in her basket and she opened the jar and showed them the bright -honeycomb, then, breaking clean skewers from a wayside hazel, dipped -them in the liquid gold and gave each child a taste. They left her at -a lane mouth, and she walked for a little way with two women who were -carrying between them an old tavern sign painted with a sheaf of wheat -and a giant bunch of grapes. When she had left these two behind and had -gone some distance upon a bare, sunny road, she saw before her like a -picture the river and the bridge, the climbing town and the castle. She -could make out the Black Tower among the trees. - -The town was quit of the plague. To the knowing there would be still -visible a gloom about the place, a trailing shadow of remembered fear -and loss. People would be missed from the streets, vacant houses and -shops remarked. Street cries and sounds would come more sombrely and -the sunshine fall less warmly. But to the stranger it would seem a -town as usual. For Joan, it was not so gay and rich as once it had -been, because she that looked on it was not so care-free as once she -had been. But still it was to her the great town, so different from -Hawthorn, so jewelled with pleasant memories.... She passed the -vintner’s house and was glad to see that it was open and cheerful, and -that therefore he had not died of the plague. At length she came to -climb the castle hill, and with her heart beating fast to cross the -pleasaunce and go around to a certain small door of the offices through -which she would soonest gain admittance to Mistress Borrow. The sky was -so blue, the grass, the flowers, the budding trees were so fair, mavis -and lark and robin sang so shrill and sweet, that earth and heaven once -more assumed for Joan a mother aspect. Warm, not unhappy, tears came -to her eyes. She shook them back and went on over daisies and violets. -She had not slept last night and the miles were long between her and -Heron’s cottage. She felt light-headed with the assurance of comfort -and counsel, the sense that the black cloud that had gathered about her -so strangely, so almost she knew not how, would now begin to melt away. - -Mistress Borrow was not at the castle. Her sister, thirty miles away, -was dying of a dropsy, and the housekeeper had been given leave to -go to her. She had gone last week—she might be away a month.... The -family were not there—they had gone at the first alarm of the plague. -Sir Richard had stayed through it and my lord the countess’s father, -had stopped for a week, but they, too, were now away.... It was a -civil-spoken girl who told her all this, a new maidservant who had -no knowledge of Joan. There were men and women servitors whom she -remembered and who would remember her, but when the girl asked if, -Mistress Borrow being away, she could do her errand to any one else, -she shook her head. “You look dazed,” said the maid. “Better come in -and sit awhile.” But no, said Joan, she must be getting home. So she -thanked the girl, and they said good-morning to each other, and she -left the little door and the flagged courtyard, and coming out under -an archway found herself again upon the flower-starred grass, with -the shadows of the trees showing two hours from noon. To the right -stretched the castle wood, and she would go through it and see again -the huntsman’s house. - -It rose among the trees before her, a comfortable, friendly, low, -deep-windowed place. She would not go very near; she did not know the -people who had it now, and truly she felt dazed and beaten and did not -wish questioning or talk. She found an old, familiar oak with huge and -knotted roots rising amid bracken, and here she sank down and lay with -her head upon her arm and her eyes upon the place where in all her -life she had been happiest. An old hound came and snuffed about her, a -redbreast watched her from a bough. She lay for some time, resting, not -thinking but dreaming back. At last she rose, settled the basket upon -her arm, looked long at the huntsman’s house, then turned away, and -leaving the wood began to descend the castle hill. - -When she passed through the high street of the town the church bells -were ringing. She turned out of the brighter street into one that -sloped to the river, and here she came upon an open place and the -prison tall and dark. She stopped short, standing in the shadow of a -bit of wall. It was easy for one’s own cares to make one forget, and -she had forgotten Aderhold. But he would be here—there was no real -gaol in Hawthorn itself, though offenders might be locked for a time in -a dungeon-like room beneath the sexton’s house. But a learned man and -a property-owner and a man accused of the greatest crime of all, which -was to deny the real existence and power of the God of Abraham, Isaac, -and Jacob,—such an one would be brought here. They would have haled -Master Aderhold here last night.... She stood and gazed at the frowning -mass. The windows were few and far apart and small and closely barred. -To-day that was so sunshiny bright would be stifling and black enough -in there. She wished that she could send in the light and air. - -A man, coming, too, from the high street with his course shaped -for Hawthorn Village, joined her where she stood. He was a wiry, -crooked-shouldered, grizzle-headed, poorly clad person with a face of -some knavery, cunning, and wildness. Over his shoulder, strung together -with leather thongs, hung some small pots and pans, and in a leather -pouch he seemed to carry tools and bits of metal. Joan recognized him -for the tinker, who, after wandering far and wide, came back, at long -intervals, to a hut just this side of Hawthorn. It appeared that on his -part he remembered her face. “From Heron’s cottage, mistress?—near -the Oak Grange.” He seemed to cast a glance upon the prison, but then -he looked at her grey eyes and her face, paler to-day than was its -wont, and asked if she had walked from home. She said yes, she had been -to see the housekeeper at the castle—but she was not there. “Was she -walking back to Hawthorn?” Yes, she said, and began to move across the -prison square. He moved with her. “I walked from Hawthorn myself this -morning. Matters to buy for my trade! Shall stop here at the Boar’s -Head before I take the road back.” To her content he left her, and she -went on by the great church and down the hill to the arched bridge. But -when she had crossed it, and when the river behind her lay thin like a -silver crescent, she found him again at her side. - -It was hot midday and the road bare of folk. She did not wish a -travelling companion and would have liked to tell him so, but she was -somehow cowed this noon, weary and listless where on the sunrise road -she had been hopeful. She let him walk beside her, a freakish figure, -vowed to mischief. Immediately he began to talk about the plague. -Her father had died?—“Yes.”—He had been told so. Many people had -died—many people in the town, and not so many, but enough in Hawthorn -and roundabout. Once he saw the plague. He was lying in the heather -on a hillside near a town that had it. Dark was coming. Then a great -figure of a woman, black and purple, with a veil all over, rose -straight up above the roofs and chimneys. She lifted her arms and took -the veil from her head, and it was crowned with shiny gold and she was -the Plague—and she floated in the sky and took her veil and drew it -behind her, and every roof it touched they were going to die in that -house.—Yes, tinkers saw strange things, wandering over the country. -There were a many strange things, weren’t there? The plague left the -country very fearful—and there was another strange thing, Fear! It -took a man and knocked the heart out of him—but then to make up, it -gave him more eyes and ears than he’d ever had before! - -He looked at her aslant. “Did you ever see the Devil?” - -“No.” - -“Then you aren’t fearful,” said the tinker. “Fearful folk can see him -plain.” - -He kept silence for a little, his eyes upon a cloud of butterflies -fluttering before them over a muddy place in the road, then again -turned upon Joan his curious, half-squinting look. “Of course there’ve -been men who weren’t afraid and yet have seen him. Men who were great -enemies to him, and pushing him hard, and he so angry and despairing -that he shows himself, tail, claws, and all! Tall Bible men and great -men like Doctor Martin Luther who threw his ink-well at him. And a -lot of other men—mass-priests, and bishops, and marprelates, all -the same. It’s to their honour to have seen him, for so the people -see how the Devil must hate them to come himself to beard them, and -what a strong enemy they are to him, which means, of course, that the -King of Heaven must hold them in high regard.—Even poor wights may -sometimes give a good blow—just as a camp-follower might save an army -or a scullion a palace! I’m not saying that I didn’t get a glint of his -horns myself once on Little Heath, between two furze bushes!” - -Joan was not talkative. She walked steadily on, but she was tired, and -her mind now seemed to drowse, and now, rousing itself, strayed far -from the other’s talk. - -The tinker was piqued by her inattention. “And then witches and -warlocks see him.—_Women_ see him,” he said with spite. “And not -because they’re his enemies neither! Ten women know him, hair and hoof, -to one man.... For why? They knew him first, as the good Book tells us, -and became his gossips in Eden Garden. So ’tis that still when things -go wrong ’tis woman that gives them the shog. The Devil gives her the -apple still, and she takes it and shakes out harm on mankind—which -is why we’ve got a leave to keep her somewhat down! That’s woman in -ordinary—and then you come to witches—” - -Joan’s eyelids twitched. - -He saw that she attended. “Witches! First they begin by having commerce -with elves and fays, green men, and such. They get into fairy hills -and eat and drink there, and they dance in the moonlight around trees -in the wood. But the elves are the Devil’s cousins, and he’s always on -hand, and some night he comes smirking up, dressed now this way and -now that. So the woman drops a curtsy, and he puts out his hand and -gives her something, just as he did in Eden Garden. She takes it, and -that seals her both sides of the Judgement Day! Pay for pay! Blood -gives him strength, and so he sucks from a little place he makes upon -her body—that’s the witch mark that can’t be made to feel pain, and -that’s why we strip and prick witches to find their mark, which is -better proof even than their confessing! Now she’s the Devil’s servant -and leman forever, and begins to work evil and practise the Black Art. -He shows her how to fly through the air and change herself into all -manner of shapes. Then she goes to his Sabbat and learns to know other -witches and maybe a wizard or two, though there aren’t so many wizards. -They’re mostly witches and demons. If you look overhead at night you -can sometimes see a scud of them flying between you and the moon. Then -begin the tempests of hail and thunder and lightning, and the ships -that are sunk at sea, and the murrain in the cattle, and the corn -blighted and ricks burned and beasts lamed and children possessed and -gear taken and sickness come—” - -He stopped to cough and also to observe if she were listening. She was -listening. He was saying nothing that she had not heard before. They -were commonplaces alike of pulpit and doorstep. But it had all been -like figures seen afar off and upon another road. Now she had come to -a place in life where, bewildered, she found them about her. Joan was -conscious that life was becoming like an evil dream. Just as in a dream -a hundred inconsequences might form the strongest net, entangling you, -withholding you from some longed-for escape, so now, awake, a hundred -things so little in themselves— She never said to herself that there -was a net weaving about her; the mind, struck and bewildered, could not -yet give things a name, perhaps would not if it could. She only saw the -gold and warmth going for her steadily out of the sunshine—and knew -not how it came that they were going nor how to stop that departure. -Now she said dully, “I do not believe all that,” and then saw -immediately that it was a mistake for any one to say that. - -The tinker again looked aslant. “Most of your witches are old women. -At their Sabbats you’ll see a hundred withered gammers, dancing and -leaping around a fire with the Devil sitting in the midst, and all -sing-songing a charm and brewing in a kettle a drink with which to -freeze men’s blood! But each crew hath always one young witch that they -call the maiden. A young and well-looking wench with red lips and she -calls the dance. They were burning such an one where I was a while ago -in Scotland. She cried out, ‘I be no witch! I be no witch!’ to the -end. But they sang and prayed her down and she burned on.” - -Joan moistened her lips. “Why did they think she was—” - -“Ah,” said the tinker, “there was a young laird she had bewitched! He -peaked and pined and syne he cried out that a dirk was always turning -in his side. So they found, beneath the hearth in her cot, a figure of -wax with a rusted nail set in its side, and as the wax melted away, -so was he to pine. And there were other tokens and matters proved on -her. Beside, when they tried her in the loch she never sank at all. -_Convicta et combusta_—which is what they write in witch cases upon -the court book.” - -By now they were much advanced upon the Hawthorn road. The day was -warm, the air moist and languid. Joan felt deadly tired. There swam -in her mind a desire to be away, away—to find a door from this earth -that was growing drear and ugly. She moved in silence, her grey eyes -wide and fixed. The tinker, his throat dry with talking, drew in front -of him one of the pans which he carried and in lieu of further speech -drummed upon it as he walked. Presently a cart came up behind them, -empty but for a few trusses of hay, and the carter known to them both, -being Cecily Lukin’s brother. - -“Hey!” said the tinker. “Give me a lift!” - -The cart stopped. “Get in!” said Lukin. He stared at Joan. - -The tinker, swinging himself up, spoke with a grin. “There’s room for -you too—” - -Joan shook her head. She made no halting, but went on by in her greyish -gown and wide hat with her basket on her arm. - -The carter flicked his horse, the cart passed her, left her behind, in -a few minutes disappeared around a bend of the road. To the last the -two men stared back at her; she seemed to hear Lukin’s slow, clownish -voice repeating Cecily’s tattle—Cecily’s and Alison’s. - -Hawthorn Village grew plain before her: thatched cottages, the trees -upon the green, the church yews and the church tower—there flashed -upon her again yesterday at church, and Master Aderhold in prison. He -was a good man; despite what the minister had said, she believed that -with passion—he was a good man. It had not kept them from haling him -to prison. What would they do to him, what?... She came to the path -that would spare her going through the village and turned into it from -the highway. It led her by the stream and through the fields and out -upon Hawthorn Forest road. Heron’s cottage was in sight when she met -Goodman Cole, walking to the village. - -He looked at her oddly. “Good-day, Joan.” - -“Good-day, Goodman.” - -“Where have you been?” - -“I walked to the castle to see Mistress Borrow. But she was not there.” - -Goodman Cole propped himself upon his stick, full in her way in the -sunny road. “We are seeing strange doings in Hawthorn Parish! Aye, -strange doings we are seeing! Have you heard about Master Harry -Carthew?” - -“No.—Heard what?” - -“Then I’ll tell you,” said the old man. “Yesterday afternoon Master -Carthew rode a part of the way with the men who were taking the leech -to the town.—And there,” said Goodman Cole, “is another strange thing! -That we could like an atheist well enough, and think him skilled and -kindly, and all the time he was mankind’s deadliest foe! ’Twas the -Devil sure that blinded us!—Well, as I was telling you, Master Carthew -rode a part of the way. Then, having seen them well started, he turns -his horse, meaning to go first to Master Clement’s to consult about -having a commission named, before the next assize, to look into a many -things that have happened about Hawthorn, some in connection with the -leech and some by themselves—and then to ride from the minister’s home -to Carthew House. It was stormy as we know, the kind of hot and dark -storm they say witches brew. He was riding, looking straight before -him, and thinking what a darkness like the darkness of the sky was over -England, when what does his horse do but start aside and begin to rear -and plunge—and yet there was nothing there! It lightened, and the road -on all sides lay bare. And yet, in an instant, just like that! Master -Carthew was struck in the side and wounded as by a sword or dagger. It -lightened again and he had time to see a tall black man dressed, bit -for bit, like the leech,—and it lightened the third time and the road -was bare as a blade, only he saw on the top of a bank a figure like a -woman making signs to the sky. Then it fell dark, and there burst a -great roar of thunder and wind and the horse began to run. He checked -it just outside Hawthorn and rode around by Old Path and the fields, -for he felt himself bleeding and did not wish to frighten people. So, -going slowly, he got home at last, and they laid him in bed and found a -great wound in his side.... Joan!” - -“Will he die?” said Joan. - -“And will you be glad if he does?... Wench, wench, why do you look like -that?” - -The old man and she faced each other, between them but a narrow space -of the forest road. Her face was mobile, transparent,—a clear window -through which much of her nature might be read. She had never thought -to try to veil it—never until of late. It was, on the whole, a strong -and beautiful nature, and none had quarrelled with the face that was -its window. But of late there had come into her life to work her injury -something bitter, poisonous, and dark. Fear and hatred had come, and -a burning wrath against the net that was weaving, she knew not how—a -wrath and helplessness and a wrath against her helplessness. All her -nature flamed against a lie and an injustice. And because she had -known so little fear, and when it came it found it hard to make an -entry, so it worked like poison when it was within the citadel. It -was the foe she liked least; all her being rose and wrought to cast -it out. But it was giving her a fight—it was giving her a fight.... -And nowadays she had to try not to show what she thought or felt. -Sometimes, by force of wit and will, she succeeded, keeping her soul -back from the window of her face. She was not succeeding now, she felt. -She bit her lips, she struggled, she turned her face from Goodman Cole, -and stood, her hands closing and unclosing, then, the victory won, but -too late to save her with him, she turned upon him a quiet face. - -It was too late. A good old man, but simple and superstitious, he was -staring at her with a misliking and terror of his own. - -“I’d heard tales, but I wouldn’t believe any real harm of Heron’s -daughter,—but God knows what to think when a woman looks like that!” -He edged from her, his hand trembled upon his staff; he would evidently -put distance between them, be gone on his way. “The minister saith that -from the Witch of Endor on they have baleful eyes—” - -He suddenly put himself in motion. “Good-day to you!” he said in a -quavering voice, and went on down the road with a more rapid step than -was his wont. - - - - -CHAPTER XVI - -MASTER THOMAS CLEMENT - - -TWO magistrates and certain of the clergy of the town, Justice Carthew -and Master Thomas Clement from Hawthorn, sat in consultation in a room -opening from the hall of assizes. Court was not sitting—it lacked a -month and more of the time when judges on circuit would appear and make -a gaol delivery. In the mean time a precognition was to be prepared. -The case was diabolical and aggravated, involving as it did apostasy, -idolatry, blasphemy, and sorcery of a dye most villanous. Evidence -should not lack, witnesses must abound. On the main counts of apostasy -and blasphemy the prisoner was himself convict by himself. He had been -brought from the prison hard by to this room for examination, and the -clergy had questioned him. But no pressure or cunning questions would -make him confess idolatry or sorcery or the procuring of Master Harry -Carthew’s wound. - -The clerk wrote down what they had—Master Clement’s evidence and -Squire Carthew’s, together with the evidence they had gathered from -others at Hawthorn, the clergy’s questions and the prisoner’s answers. -He copied also Master Harry Carthew’s written testimony, Master Carthew -himself being still in bed, fevered of his wound. There was enough -and many times enough for the physician’s commitment and most close -confinement until assize day—enough to warrant what Carthew and the -clergy urged, a petition to the Privy Council that there be especially -sent a certain judge known and belauded for his strict handling of -such offences, and that, pending assizes, a commission be named to -take depositions and make sweeping examination throughout the Hawthorn -end of the county—seeing that Satan had rarely just one in his court. -Indeed, there were signs in many directions of a hellish activity, -whether in pact with the leech or independent of him remained to be -discovered. Hawthorn mentioned the afflicted child at North-End Farm, -the great number of lamed animals, a barn consumed to ashes, and the -hailstorm that had cut the young wheat. - -“A woman was seen by Master Harry Carthew?” - -The squire nodded. “Aye. Moreover, this long time Mother Spuraway has -been suspect.” - -The minister of Hawthorn sat, a small, rigid, black figure, his hands -clasped upon the board before him, his light-hued, intense eyes seeing -always one fixed vision. His voice was unexpectedly powerful, though -of a rigid quality and inclined to sing-song. “My mind is not made -up as to what brought the plague to Hawthorn and the region north. -But I hold it full likely that Satan was concerned to harass a godly -and innocent people, godly beyond many in England, if I say it that -perhaps should not! It is well known and abundantly proved that his -imps and ministers, his infidels, Sadducees, and witches go about to -construct a pestilence no less readily than they do a hailstorm or a -tempest that miserably sinks a ship at sea. I would have the commission -take evidence upon that point also—” - -The clerk, a thin, stooping, humble man, slightly coughed, then spoke -deprecatingly. “If I may make so bold, your worships—the prisoner hath -a manner of good reputation among some in this town. He came during the -plague and healed many.” - -“Aye, so?” answered Justice Carthew. “About Hawthorn also may be found -a few silly folk who would praise him, though none I think will praise -him who were at church last Sunday! But this cargo of damnable stuff -we’ve found will beat down their good opinion.” - -“The unsafest thing,” said a fellow justice, and nodded -portentously,—“the unsafest thing a plain man can do is to think and -speak well of a heretic.” - -And with that serving-men from the Boar’s Head near by entered, bearing -a collation for the magistrates and clergy assembled.... - -Late in the afternoon the men from Hawthorn returned home. Squire -Carthew rode with pursed lips, ponderously on to Carthew House. But the -minister refused an invitation to accompany him. He wished to consider -these matters in his closet, alone with the Scriptures and in prayer. -He put up his horse and went into his small, chill house. There lived -with him an aunt and one maidservant, and, it being late, they had his -supper spread and waiting. But he would not touch the food; he had -ordained for himself a fast. - -With a candle in his hand he went into his small bare room and closed -the door. Cloak and hat laid aside, he appeared slight and spare and -sad-coloured, a man as intensely in earnest as might well be; a man, -as far as his conscious knowledge of himself could light the vaults -and caverns, sincere and of an undivided will to the service and -glory of his God. On the table lay his Bible, open; from wall to wall -stretched a space of bare floor good for slow-pacing to and fro, good -for kneeling, for wrestling in prayer. The room was haunted to him; -it had seen so many of what he and all his day, and days before and -days after, called “spiritual struggles.” But there was pleasure no -less than gloom and exaltation in the haunting; there were emanations -from the walls of triumph, for though his soul agonized he was bold to -believe that also it conquered. He believed that he was foe of Satan -and henchman of the Lord. - -Terror at times overwhelmed the henchman—panic thoughts that Satan -had him; cold and awful doubts of his acceptability to his overlord. -But they were not lasting; they went away like the chill mists from -the face of the hills. It was incredible, it was impossible that the -Lord would not see his own banner, would not recognize and succour his -own liegeman! The liegeman might err and come under displeasure; good! -the punishment came in agony and remorse for lukewarm zeal, in a shown -sight of the evil lord to whose suzerainty he might be transferred and -of that lord’s dismal and horrible demesne! Nay, more solemnly and -threateningly, in an allowed vision of what a disobedient liegeman -would forfeit—the heavens opening and showing the rainbow-circled -throne, the seven lamps, the sea of glass, the winged beasts saying, -“Holy, Holy, Holy!” and giving glory and honour and thanks; the -four-and-twenty elders crowned with gold, falling down and worshipping -Him who sat on the Throne; the streets of gold, and the twelve gates, -and the temple open in heaven, and in the temple the ark of the -testament. “O God,” prayed the minister, “take not my name from the -book of life! Take not my name from the book of life, and I will serve -thee forever and ever!” - -Master Clement very truly worshipped the God whom he had seated on the -throne, and was jealous for his honour and glory and solicitous for -his praise among men, and would give life itself to bring all mankind -under his Lord’s supremacy. As little as any man-at-war of an earthly -feudal suzerain would he have hesitated to compel them to come in. Was -it not to their endless, boundless good, and without was there any -other thing than hell eternal and everlasting and the evil lord? If, -contumaciously, they would not come in, or if being in they rebelled -and broke from their allegiance, what else was to be done but to -carry fire and sword—that is, to put into operation the laws of the -land—against his Lord’s enemies? Had any one called his attention to -the fact of how largely liegemen like himself had brought these laws -into being, he would have answered, Yes; under the direction of their -Suzerain’s own Word, writ down for their perpetual guidance, shortly -after the making of the world! - -It was not alone eager jealousy for his Lord’s glory and honour, nor -anxious care that he himself prove in no wise an idle and unprofitable -servant, that was felt by Master Clement. To his intense zeal and his -own cries for life eternal was added a thwart love of mankind—that -portion of it enclosed in the great sheepfold, and that portion who, -wandering outside, lost upon the mountain-sides in the cold and -darkness, yet had in them no stubbornness, but would hasten to the -fold so soon as they heard the shepherd’s voice through the mist. He -was eager for them, his brothers and children in the fold; eager, too, -for the poor lost souls upon the mountains,—lost, yet not wilfully, -stubbornly, and abandonedly lost, but capable of being found and -regained, so many as were elected. - -But the others, ah, the others! they who set up their own wills and -professed other knowledge, or, if not knowledge, then doubt and -scepticism of the liegeman’s knowledge, writing a question mark beside -that which was not to be questioned—they who moved away from the -fold in its completeness! Master Clement’s zeal flared downward no -less than upward, to the left no less than to the right. He hated -with intensity—with the greater intensity that he was so sure his -hatred was disinterested. “Have I not hated _Thy_ enemies?” But if -those without were manifestly rather than invisibly of the Kingdom -of Satan,—if their ill-doing was so great that it became as it were -_corporeal_,—if the people saw them open atheists, wizards, and -witches,—if their foot had slipped or their master had been negligent -to cover them with his mantle of darkness,—the soul of Master Clement -experienced a grim and deadly exaltation. He tightened his belt, he saw -that his axe was sharp, he went forth to hew the dead and poisoned wood -out of the forest of the Lord. - -In his small room he sat and read by his one candle—read those -portions of the Old Testament and the New which he wished to read. -Had a spirit queried his choice he would have answered, “Is it not -all his Word? And are not these the indicated circumstances and this -very passage the Answer and Direction?” When he had finished reading -he knelt and prayed long and fervently. His prayer told his God who He -was, his attributes, and what was his usual and expected conduct; it -told Him who were his enemies and rehearsed the nature of the ill they -would do Him; then changed to a vehement petition that if it was his -will He would discover his enemies and bring them to confusion—and if -by means of the worm Thomas Clement— - -He prayed in terrible earnest, his hands locking and unlocking, beads -of sweat upon his brow, prayed for the better part of an hour. Finally -he rose from his knees, and standing by the table read yet another -passage, then paced the floor, then sat down, and, drawing forth the -tablets upon which he had made his own notes of the examination that -day, fell to studying them, the open book yet beside him. - -He read over a list of questions with the answers Aderhold had given. -He had not been quick to give the answers—he had fenced—he had -striven to shift the ground—but at last, with a desperate quietness, -he had given them. - -_Qu._ Do you believe in God? - -_Ans._ In my sense, yes. In your sense, no. - -_Qu._ In God as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost? - -_Ans._ No. - -_Qu._ Then you do not believe in the Trinity? - -_Ans._ No. - -There were other questions—a number of them—and the answers. But the -very beginning was enough—enough. Master Clement, sitting rigidly, -stared at the opposite wall. A sentence formed itself clearly before -his eyes, the letters well made, of a red colour. Only the last of the -three words wavered a little. CONVICTED AND HANGED. Or it might be -CONVICTED AND BURNED. The first two words stood steady, and above them -the name, GILBERT ADERHOLD. - -The concern was now to prove the sorcery—and to take all confederates -in the net—to lop Satan in all his members. - -The minister stared at the wall. Another name formed itself as though -it were stained there—MOTHER SPURAWAY.... - -Master Clement sat rigid, trying to place other names beside this -one. It was his sincere belief that there were others. The probable -diabolical activities at the Oak Grange—the coming to Hawthorn, -after so long and godly an immunity, of the late sickness—the -varied and mysterious happenings, losses, and attacks with which -village and countryside were beginning to buzz—this final heinous -Satan-revenge and attempt upon the godliest and most greatly promising -young man of whom he had any knowledge—back again, and above all, -to the blasphemer, the atheist, the idolater, and denier now fast in -gaol!—Master Clement was firm in his belief that so frightful and -important a round of occurrences pointed to many and prime agents of -evil, though always that unbeliever yonder would prove the ring-leader, -the very lieutenant of Satan himself! Hawthorn made a narrow stage for -such a determined and concentrated presence and effort on the part of -the Prince of the Power of the Air. But Master Clement’s was a narrow -experience and a mind of one province. To him, truly, the stage seemed -of the widest, and the quarry worthy Apollyon’s presence in person. - -The atheist and sorcerer himself—Mother Spuraway—who else? The -minister thought of old Dorothy at the Grange. There existed a -presupposition of contamination. On the other hand, so far as he knew, -there had never gone out a word against her; she had seemed a pious, -harmless soul, trudging to church in all weathers. That in itself, -though, the Devil was wont to use as a mask. Witness the atheist and -sorcerer at church! Nay, was it not known that sometimes Satan came -himself to listen and to confound, if he might, the preacher, making -him tame and cold in his discourse; or razing from his memory that -which he had carefully prepared; or putting into his mind, even while -he preached, worldly and wicked and satiric thoughts; or during a -sermon of so great power that all who heard should be lifted to the -courts of heaven, stuffing the mind of the congregation with a like -gallimaufrey? - -The minister sat stiffly, staring at the wall. Dorothy’s name did not -form itself there before him, but neither did he wholly dismiss it -from mind. He put it, as it were, on the wall at right angles, marked, -“To be further thought on.” Then what other name or names for the main -wall?... Old Marget Primrose was dead. He thought of two or three old -and solitary women, and of the son of one of the Grange tenants—a -silent and company-shunning youth who had gotten his letters somehow, -and went dreaming through the woods with a book. Once Master Clement, -meeting him by the stream-side, had taken his book from him and looking -at it found it naught but idle verse; moreover, it seemed that it was -Master Gilbert Aderhold’s book, and that the youth went at times to -the Grange for instruction.... All these, the boy with the itch for -learning, and the two or three women he relegated to the wall with old -Dorothy. - -There was one other—there was Grace Maybank. She was not old, but -Satan, though for occult reasons he oftenest signed them old, signed -them young as well, and though he gave preferment to the ugly and the -bent, would take good looks when they were at hand. Satan had already -signed Grace in another department of the Kingdom of Evil-doing. The -minister rose, and going to a press that stood in the room, took from -it a book in which was entered, among other things, cases of church -discipline. He found the page, the date several years back. _Grace -Maybank, Fornicatress. Stood before the congregation, two Sundays in -each month for three months in succession. Texts preached from on these -Sundays, for the warning of sinners...._ And again, _Grace Maybank, her -infant being born, stood with it in her arms before the congregation, -Sunday, June the —--_. - -Grace came into the probable class. Moreover—“Ha!” said the minister, -recollection rising to the surface. He took from a second shelf a book -of record, made not by himself, but by his predecessor, the godly -Master Thomson. It ran back twenty years and more. He found near the -beginning of the book what he was looking for. _Ellice Maybank. Suspect -of being a witch, and dragged through Hawthorn Pond. The said Ellice -swam. Died of a fever before she could be brought to trial._ - -“Ha!” said Master Clement; “it descends! it descends!” But he was a -careful and scrupulous man, and so he put Grace’s name only up on the -probable wall. - -It was growing late. A wind had arisen and moaned around the house. He -went to the window and looked out at the church and the church yews. -A waning moon hung in the east. The yews were black, the church was -palely silvered; Master Clement regarded the church with eyes that -softened, grew almost mild. The plain interior, the plain exterior, the -hard stones, the tower lifting squarely and uncompromisingly toward -the span of sky that was called the zenith—whatever of romance was in -Master Clement’s nature clung and centred itself here! Hawthorn Church -was his beloved, it was his bride. - -He stood by the window for some minutes, then turning began again to -pace the room, and then once more to read in the Bible. It chanced -now—his main readings that night having been concluded—that he -had eyes for passages of a different timbre. He read words of old, -firm wisdom, Oriental tenderness, mystic rapture, strainings toward -unity—golden words that time would not willingly let slip. Many a -soul, many a tradition, many a mind had left their mark in that book, -and some were very beautiful, and the voices of some were music and -long-lasting truth and carried like trumpets. - -Master Clement read, and his soul mounted: only it mounted not to where -it could overlook the earlier reading in the same Bible. It never came -to a point where it could hold the two side by side and say, “Judge you -which concept and which mind you will accept as brother to your own! -For many minds have made this book.” Master Clement read, and his soul -lightened and lifted, but not so far as to change settled perspectives. -Had he not read these passages a thousand times before? The names -remained upon the wall, and when after a time he undressed and laid -himself in bed, they stayed before him without a shadow of wavering -until he slept. Indeed, he drowsed away upon the word CONVICTED— - -Morning came. He rose at an ascetic’s hour, dressed in a half-light, -and ate his frugal breakfast while the day was yet at the dawn. The -two women waited upon him; breakfast over, he read the Scriptures to -them, and standing, prayed above their bowed heads. Later he went out -into the hedged path between his house and the church and began his -customary slow walking to and fro for morning exercise. The sun was -coming up, a multitude of birds sang in the ancient trees. Master -Clement walked, small, arid, meagre, and upright, his hands at his -sides, and presently, in his walking, caught sight of something white -at the edge of the path. It proved to be a hand’s-breadth of paper, -kept in place by a pebble. He stooped and picked it up. On it was -marked in rude letters, JOAN HERON. He turned it over—nothing on the -other side, blank paper save for the name. He walked on with it in his -hand. Twenty paces farther there was another piece of paper, held by -another pebble, and a fair duplicate of the first—JOAN HERON. Well -within the churchyard he found the third piece—JOAN HERON. ASK JOAN -HERON WHO GAVE HER THE RUE THAT’S PLANTED IN HER GARDEN. - - - - -CHAPTER XVII - -MOTHER SPURAWAY - - -MASTER CLEMENT, the papers in his hand, retraced his steps until he -came to a bench set in the shadow of a yew that knotted the minister’s -house and garden to the churchyard. He sat down and spread the three -out upon the wood beside him. It was the last-found scrap upon which, -naturally, he concentrated attention. ASK JOAN HERON WHO GAVE HER THE -RUE THAT’S PLANTED IN HER GARDEN. He sat with knitted brow and pursed -lips, searching for a meaning. One was not there at first sight. He -weighed the words. JOAN HERON—The daughter of old Heron that had died -of the plague. He brought her before his mind’s eye—a tall, grey-eyed -girl sitting quietly in church. Save for that image she did not come -into his mind with any force; he had, after all, no great knowledge of -her. They were outlying people, the Herons, and then they had been away -from Hawthorn. He was a man of the study and the pulpit and of crisises -in the parish, rather than of any minute, loving, daily intercourse -and knowledge; theologian rather than pastor. JOAN HERON. He would, -however, presently think together any impressions or memories. Now -little occurred further than that she had been away with her father -for years, living under the walls of the castle that was prelatical. -In addition, he remembered that neither old Roger Heron nor this girl -had ever brought to him spiritual problems to be solved. Many did bring -them—cold, creeping doubts as to whether God really meant to save them -or not. But the Herons had never done so. The fact, called to mind, -just faintly darkened for him the name beneath his hand. He would make -enquiries.—WHO GAVE HER THE RUE THAT’S PLANTED IN HER GARDEN. - -Master Clement frowned. He had little taste for riddles and -uncertainties and haunting suspensions of thought. Make a line -distinct; colour matters plainly; if a thing were black, paint it in -black! The words on the paper carried no meaning, or a foolish one. -RUE.... Not long before he had been reading an account, set forth -in a book, of a number of Satan’s machinations, and of the devices, -likings, and small personal habits of his sworn servants. A bit of this -text suddenly sprang out before him, sitting there beneath the yew -tree. “_For plants—hemlock, poppy, and mandrake, and, especially, the -witches love, handle, and give to such as show inclination to become of -their company, rue_—” - -Master Clement slowly folded the three pieces of paper together, took -out his pocketbook, and laid them in it. Grace Maybank was yet strongly -in his mind, but now on the wall beside her name he put another name. - -A little later, hatted and cloaked, he stepped into Hawthorn street. -As he did so he looked northward and, seeing Squire Carthew riding -in from Carthew House, stood and waited. The squire approached, gave -good-morning, and dismounted. He nodded his head; ponderously energetic -he had put already his engines into motion. The constable with helpers -was gone at sunrise to take into custody Mother Spuraway, have her into -the village, and thrust her into the room beneath the sexton’s house -that did for village gaol. To-morrow, after examination, and if proof -of her evil-doing were forthcoming, she should be sent to town and -quartered in the prison with the leech. Orders likewise had been given -to the North-End Farm folk to bring into Hawthorn the afflicted boy. To -confront the injurer with the injured, that was the best and approved -way— - -“How is Harry Carthew this morning?” - -“Very fevered still. He talks strangely and paganly—about gods and -goddesses and Love and the Furies and I know not what trash.” - -“Ah!” said Master Clement. “Were it devil or Gilbert Aderhold who -struck him that night, be sure from the dagger would have run Satan’s -own venom, empoisoning the mind, bringing growth of nettles and darnel -into the soul! The godly young man! I will pray—I will wrestle with -God in prayer for Harry Carthew—” - -From beyond the church there burst a small riot of sound. “They’ve got -Mother Spuraway—” - -The constable had his hand upon the old woman’s arm and dragged -her along, she being lame and stumbling. Behind them marched the -constable’s helpers, a self-constituted posse. Here was the father of -the afflicted boy, and Lukin the carter, and a ditcher whose arm was -palsied, and one or two others. A dozen boys brought up the rear. One -had run ahead to cry to the village what was happening. Everybody was -coming to door and window, out of doors, into the street. Voices buzzed -and clacked. The witch fever was mounting, mounting, hardening the -heart, confusing the head! - -When Mother Spuraway saw the minister and the squire, for all she -was as old and spare and feeble as a dried reed, she broke from the -constable, and, running to them, fell upon her knees and raising her -clasped hands began at once to protest her innocence and to beg for -mercy. - -The squire spoke to the North End farmer. “They’re bringing your son -in?” - -“Aye, sir. His mother and sister and my son that’s married and his wife -and my niece and Humphrey Tanner. He’s twisting fearful, and he sees -the dog come day and come night!” - -“Your worship, your worship!” cried the old woman on her knees. “I -never could abide dogs—Is it likely I’d trouble a child?—Oh, Master -Clement—” - -The squire was speaking with the constable and the farmer, the whole -company of witch-takers hearkening to him rather than to Mother -Spuraway. Had she not kept up a like babble clean from her own hut to -Hawthorn? But the witch and straightening out the two walls were Master -Clement’s concern. Not always subtle, he was subtle when it came to -playing the inquisitor. When the rôle fell to him, it was as though he -had suddenly endued himself with a mantle that fitted. Had he lived -in a Catholic country, had he been born and baptized there into an -unquerying group, it is not unlikely that sooner or later he would have -found employment in the Holy Office, unlikelier yet that he would not -have served with zeal and a consciousness of high devoir done that King -in heaven. In a vast range of relations starkly literal, he was capable -when it came to theological detection, of keen and imaginative work. -The churchyard yews somewhat cut off the village street; the small -present crowd were attending to the squire. Master Clement put some -questions. Mother Spuraway, who was now moaning and rocking herself, -roused as best she could to answer. Associates? She had no associates. -What, in God’s name, should she have associates for? The leech? Well, -the leech had taken her trade, that was all the association there— - -“Ha!” said Master Clement. “The same trade! She hath said that far!” - -Mother Spuraway looked at him and shrank affrighted. “My trade was to -gather good herbs and make sick folk well. I meant that I was a leech -as well as he.” - -“Leechcraft is not for women,” answered Master Clement. “But leechcraft -was not his main trade. His trade is in souls to Satan, his own soul -and others. I fear me that thou art indentured to that same master and -may well speak of this atheist and sorcerer as thy fellow trafficker! -Tell me what others thou art concerned with—” - -Mother Spuraway had an inward sturdiness, though age and weakness, fear -and pain might yet betray it. “Concerned neither with him nor with -others. Oh me! oh me! I’ve always stood on my own feet and harmed no -one—” - -“They that stand on their own feet and by their own strength,” said the -minister, “are naught. So they lean not upon Scripture and know that -they are naught in themselves, but only by grace of another, they are -already lost and have reached their hand to Satan.—Tell me if Grace -Maybank be of thy company?” - -“Grace Maybank!” Mother Spuraway’s voice quavered and her frame seemed -to shake. Perhaps there rose a memory of a love philtre or charm, or -of Grace in trouble, coming secretly for counsel. But Mother Spuraway -never took life. The child was born, was it not?—as merry and pretty a -child as if it were not set apart and branded for life. Grace? It had -been little that she had done for Grace! The charm had not worked; the -man would not offer marriage, and so save Grace from what came upon -her. Grace herself had come to the hut and bitterly reviled her for -a useless wise woman. Grace Maybank! She began to stammer and protest -that she and Grace were strangers.—But Master Clement thought the most -and the worst and the impossible. “Ha!” he said. “That window hath a -light in it!” In his mind Grace’s name left the one wall and came over -to the other. - -The squire made a movement from the constable, the constable a movement -toward his prisoner. “Tell me,” said Master Clement in a tense and low -voice,—“tell me why you gave a bush of rue to Joan Heron?” - -He had not known that she had done it. It had flashed upon him to make -that move. Made, he saw that it was correct. - -Mother Spuraway, dazed and shaken, put up her two hands as though to -ward off blows that she knew not why were coming. “What harm,” queried -her thin old frightened voice, “in giving a body a sprig of rue? She -had none in her garden.” - -“How did the rue come to you?” - -“It was growing about the burned cot.” For all her terror and misery -Mother Spuraway felt a gust of anger. “O Jesus! What questions Master -Clement asks!” - -The constable came and took her by the arms. “On with you! Don’t say -that you can’t walk, when we know that you can dance and fly!” - -She broke again into a pitiful clamour. “I am no witch!—Satan’s no -friend nor master nor king of mine—I know naught of the leech—I’ve -put no spell on any one—Oh, gentlemen, gentlemen, think on the mother -that bore you—” The constable and his helpers dragged her away. Her -voice came back—“Think—think! How could I—” - -In a little while the North-End Farm folk came into Hawthorn—Hawthorn -quivering now with excitement. Every loss of a twelvemonth, every -undeserved grief, every untoward happening, every petty mystery was -awake and growing monstrous. The air was changing, the yew trees, the -look of the houses, the loom to the west of Hawthorn Forest.... To-day, -to an observer, the church might look not greatly different from a -palm-thatched or cedar roof over some sacred stone or carven god. Out -of the deep veins, out of the elder world, old and gross superstition -had been whistled up. It had not far to come; the elder world was close -of kin. On the climbing road of the human mind the scenery of the lower -slopes began to glow. - -The sexton’s house giving upon the green, Hawthorn could find pretext -enough for gathering there in humming clusters. The sexton had a -clean, bare room where at times charges were heard and prisoners -brought up for examination from a cellar-like apartment below. On the -whole, Justice Carthew preferred it to having poachers and vagrants, -quarrelers, swearers and breakers of various commandments, petty -officers, complainants, and witnesses trampling into Carthew House. Now -as the warm midday drew on, he entered, marshalled by the constable; -with him, besides a young man half his son’s tutor, half his own clerk, -Master Clement, and a neighbour or two of fair consequence in the -village and in Hawthorn Church. In the room already were the North-End -Farm folk. The crowd pressed in behind, or, when no more were admitted, -stood as close as might be without the door, left open for the air. -Outside the one crazy window boys stood on heaped stones, their eyes -a-row above the sill. The air seemed to beat and sound and pulse. No -other kind of lawbreaking could so raise, so universalize, emotion. -Other kinds were particular, affecting a few. But where sorcery and -witchcraft, blasphemy and heresy, were arraigned, even though it were -in a poor room and village like to this, there the universal enemy, -there the personal foe of God Almighty, came into court! The personal -foe of God was naturally the would-be murderer of every baptized soul -alive—the unbaptized were his already. Nor did he stop at attempts -against their souls; he did not hesitate to direct his engines against -their bodies and their goods, to burn their ricks and barns, blast -their fields, palsy their arms, lame their beasts, make their children -peak and pine, wither the strength of men within them—If he had -not yet harmed them to-day, he but waited for the chance to do so -to-morrow! No man, woman, or child was safe, and the thing to be done -was to destroy his instruments as fast as they were found. - -The North-End Farm boy—an observer from the platform of a further age -might have conjectured that it was partly a nervous disorder marked by -hysteria, partly an impish satisfaction in the commotion produced and -the attention received, partly an actual rejoicing in the workings of -his own imagination together with a far past, early-man unawareness -of any reason for forbearance—the North-End Farm boy cried out and -writhed tormentedly. - -They brought Mother Spuraway up the steep stair from the cellar and -into the room, and making a clear space stood her before the boy for -what should be judgement and doom. “The dog! the dog!” he cried, and -writhed in the arms of the men behind him—“The dog!” - -The room quivered and sucked in its breath. Now the magistrate, and -now, at the magistrate’s nod, the minister, questioned him. “You see -the dog?—Where do you see it?—There? But something else is standing -there! A woman is standing there.... Ha! Only the dog there, showing -his teeth at you? Do you see no woman?... He sees no woman. He sees -only the dog.” - -“The dog! the dog!” cried the boy. “The constable brought the dog -in with him.... Oh, it wants to get at me! It’s trying to shake the -constable off! Oh, oh, don’t let it!” And he writhed and twisted, half -terrified and persuaded by the vividness of his own creation, deep down -enjoying himself. - -Commotion and hard breathing held in the room and outside about the -door and window. “He sees her as she is when she’s running with -Satan!... Witch!... Witch!...” - -Mother Spuraway fell again upon her knees, beat her hands together with -passion. “It’s not true—he’s lying!—Oh, sirs, are you going to hang -me for what a sick child says?” - -North-End Farm raised an answering clamour. “Thou witch! ’Tis thou -that liest! Take thy spells off him!” The greater part of the room -became vocal, “’Tis not only that boy!—A many and a many things -happening!—My arm, thou witch! I dug all day, and passed thee in -the twilight, and next day ’twas like this!—The corn so thin and -burned!—The old witch! She made a sign above my wife’s drink and she -died and the babe died!—The witch! the witch! But she’s not alone.... -She and the leech.... Yes, but others than the leech.... There are folk -here who can tell.... The plague—she brought the plague—she and the -Devil and her fellows.... The pond!—Tie her thumb and toe and try her -in the water—” - -There came a surge forward. Mother Spuraway cowered and screamed. The -squire might not object to the water trial in itself, but he objected -and that strongly to any unruliness before Justice Carthew. The people -were used to being cowed; his voice, bursting out against them, drove -them back to a silence broken only by murmurs and intakes of the -breath. The North-End Farm boy continuing noisy, and crying out, his -father and mother had leave to take him from the sexton’s room and -across to the ale-house. There was curiosity to see if the dog that was -visible to him alone could follow. But no! At the door he cried out -that it tried to spring after him, but could not pass the minister’s -chair. From the ale-house itself presently came back word that he was -much comforted and quiet and said that Master Clement was keeping the -dog from him. - -Mother Spuraway sat on a bench, somewhat cut off from the rest of the -room by the heavy chairs of the Law and the Church. She sat crouched -together, for the most part silent, her white hair straggling from -beneath her cap, her lip fallen, her meagre, bloodless hands with -high-raised veins plucking at the stuff of her old worn kirtle. The day -was warm. The squire, heated and thirsty, sent across for a tankard of -ale. When it was brought, he drank, set the vessel down, and wiped his -mouth. “And now,” he said, “‘tis to find if, in getting two, we get all -the vipers in the nest—” - -He did not think so himself; nor did Master Clement, nor did the throng -of Hawthorn in the sexton’s room and without, pressing about door and -window. The whispers had been continuous. It was much to have put an -arresting hand upon one witch, and beyond doubt she was a witch and -a _vera causa_! But for more years than a few Hawthorn had looked -somewhat askance at Mother Spuraway. She had been among them for a -long time, and these blackest happenings had not happened. Not in all -these years the plague—never before at Hawthorn such a thing as the -bold wounding of the squire’s brother—never before so many accidents -of one kind and another! For new activities new beings.... The leech, -of course, proved beyond all seeming to be so fell and wicked a -man! But not the leech alone.... The feeling, whatever it was, was -increasing. There seemed something pent and thunderous, lying in wait -for its chance.... There were those now in the crowd who had not been -here earlier, who, having heard what was toward, had made their way in -after the first. Some came from without the village. The tinker was -plain to the front. Midway of the room might be seen Will the smith’s -son and his mother, and beside them Katherine Scott, the forester’s -wife. At the back, in company with the Lukins, stood Alison Inch. - -The squire looked down at a piece of paper which he held in his hand. -“Now what is this about a grey and white cat, and the burned cot in -Hawthorn Wood?” - -There rose a murmur, like wind over sedge. It grew in volume, and out -of it came clear a woman’s voice. “It’s her familiar. He gave it to -her. The boys saw him give it to her at the burned cot.” - -The squire lifted himself a little—looked over the crowd. “Who spoke -there? Come forward here, you who spoke!” - -A confusion; then Cecily Lukin was pushed to the front. She came -protesting, her face flushed. “Oh, Your Honour, I didn’t know I was -speaking so loud! I never meant to say anything—” - -“Nay, you _must_ say,” answered the squire. “He or she who keeps -witness back will find trouble for their own part!” - -“I said naught,” said Cecily, “but that she had a grey and white cat -which lay on the hearth or in the sun, and that once I did see it anger -itself and grow larger than natural, and its eyes glowed like lanthorns -and it went backward, rubbing itself against her skirt—” - -“Mother Spuraway’s skirt?” - -“Oh, no, sir!” said Cecily. “They say Mother Spuraway’s imp is a green -frog that lives in a stream by her door—” - -A boy beside the tinker, nudged by the latter, opened his mouth. “Tom -and Dick and Jarvis and I were playing in Hawthorn Forest by the burned -cot. And a grey and white cat came out of the stones and climbed up in -the plum tree and sat and looked at us, and we tried to drive it away, -but we couldn’t. Then Master Aderhold came out of the woods and grew -as tall as the plum tree and put up his arm, and the cat came and lay -upon it. And there was Joan Heron standing in her grey dress, and she -was as tall as he was, and he gave her the cat and she laid it along -her shoulder, and they went away through the woods without their feet -touching the ground—” - -The forester’s wife was an impatient dame. By this she had worked her -way into the row nearest the justice and the minister, and now she -raised her voice. “Your Honour and Maister Clement, I keep bees, and, -Your Honour, they’ve not done well for a lang, lang time! They’ve not -done well since, out of kindness, I took three hives frae folk that -were gaeing visiting and put them with my ain. Those bees I took, I -swear were not just bees! Times I thought as much while they harboured -with my bees, and would do naught nor let my ain do aught—but I -kenned it well when they were gone back to where they came frae! Your -Honour and Maister Clement, I ha’ gone by where those hives stand -now and seen those bees come flying in with wings a span long and -shining, and bodies daubed with gold and making a humming sound like a -fiddle-string! And those visiting folk were not auld Mither Spuraway, -though I doubt not she be a witch, too!—Those beehives are standing -under the thatch of Heron’s cottage!” - - * * * * * - -At sunset that evening Joan sat on her doorstep, her elbows upon her -knees and her brow in her hands. The apple trees were in bloom, the -heartsease was in bloom beside the well, red and gold cowslips brushed -her shoe. The day had been warm, but the evening fell cool and rich. -All day she had not gone from the cottage. She had seen none pass -either; the road, the fields, the wood were as quiet as though human -life had fled from the earth. She sat with a heart oppressed, the world -grown vague and monstrous.... The cottage, the garden, the fruit trees -were wrapped in the afterglow. The birds were still; the last bee had -come in from the flowers; somewhere in a marshy meadow, the frogs were -beginning. - -The grey and white cat came and rubbed itself against her. She lifted -her head, and saw three or four men on the winding path between the -forest road and Heron’s cottage. As they came nearer she recognized -first the tinker, but in a moment saw that the one at the head was the -Hawthorn constable. Her heart stopped, then began to beat very heavily. -As they came through the gate and up the little path she rose from the -doorstep. - -“Good-day,” said one of them. - -“Good-day, neighbours.” - -The constable cleared his throat. He was a stolid, elderly man with -many daughters and sons, and he opposed to the world a wooden, -depthless face. “Probably you know,” he said, “what we’ve come for?” - -“No,” said Joan: “what have you come for?” - -The constable put out the staff that he carried and touched her on the -shoulder. “In the King’s name! You’re to come with me for being a witch -and working great harm to the King’s good subjects—for laming and -casting spells—for worshipping Satan at his sabbats at the burned cot -and the fairy oak—for plotting mischief with an infidel, blasphemer, -and sorcerer—” - -Joan stood motionless, her grey eyes clear, the blood not driven from -her heart. She had seen the harm brewing, she had had her torture -in watching the deep storm gather; now that it was rolling over her -she grew suddenly steady. Though she knew it not she had always had -strength and courage, but now she touched and drew from some great -reservoir indeed. A wholesome anger helped her to it, an inner total -rebellion and scorn, an amazed recognition of universal, incredible -mistake and folly! Truly if men based life so crumblingly, on such -a lie as this!... Sabbats at the burned cot and the fairy oak.... -Plotting with— Something swept over her face, her frame seemed to grow -taller in the flower-starred dusk by Heron’s cottage. - -The tinker was next to the constable. Now he spoke with an elfish grin -and his foot trampling down the cowslip by the door. “Mistress Young -Witch never thought, did she, that when Tom Tinker came up behind her, -standing before the prison yonder, he saw well enough that she was -making witch signs to one within?—Now the witch to the warlock—lemans -must lodge under the same roof!” - - - - -CHAPTER XVIII - -THE GAOL - - -ADERHOLD looked forth from a narrow grating, so high-placed -that he must stand a-tiptoe like a child to see at all. Summer -without,—summer, summer, and the winds of heaven! Within the gaol was -summer close and stagnant. It was difficult for light and air to make -their way into the space where he was kept. What could come came, but -much was prevented by the walls and the intention with which they had -been built. In that day, in a prison such as this, a noisy medley of -people without freedom might be found in the dark and damp central -passage and larger rooms or in the high-walled and dismal bit of court. -All manner of crime and no-crime, soil, mistake, and innocence huddled -there together, poisoning and being poisoned. Time and space received -of their poison, carried it without these walls with at least as much -ease as air and light came in, and distributed it with a blind face and -an impartial hand. - -But certain prisoners, those that people without the prison thought too -poisonous or were willing vengefully to make suffer, were not allowed -the hallway or the court or speech with fellow misery. These were put -into small, twilight chambers or dungeons. - -Aderhold paced twelve feet by six—twelve feet by six. He was shackled, -a chain from ankle to ankle, another from wrist to wrist. But they -were not heavy, and there was slack enough, so that one might walk and -to some extent use the hands. Twelve feet by six—twelve feet by six. -What light fell through the loophole window fell in one thin shaft of -gold-dust. The walls were damp to the touch, and scratched over with -names, ribaldry, and prayers. He himself, with a bit of pointed stone -that he had found, was graving in Latin upon an unmarked breadth. -Twelve by six—twelve by six—where the straw pallet was flung, not -more than three feet clear. - -He knew well how to avail himself of the escape of the mind and thereby -to defeat the hours. He had no books, but memory and imagination were -to him landscape and library, while the searching thought worked here -as elsewhere. Memory and imagination could become his foes; Aderhold -had known that from of old. Oftenest friends and great genii, but -sometimes foes with mowing faces and stabbing, icy fingers. But -strangely to him, in these days, no hostile side appeared; or if it -came, it came in lessened strength; or if its strength was the same, -then the opposing forces within him had themselves gathered power to -overcome. It seemed to him that of late he had come to a turning; fear, -shrinking, and dismay, that had often met him full course in life, -often lurked for him at corners he must pass, seemed now themselves -somewhat shrunken and sinewless. He had known that there was further -growth within him—oh, further, further!—and that some day he would -turn and look them in the face and see them for the pygmies that -they were. It seemed that the dawn of that day had been nearer than -he knew.... Twelve feet by six—twelve feet by six—with as even and -steady a pace as the irons would allow, and all the time to fancy that -he walked free in Hawthorn Wood. Then, for a change, to draw himself -up and see what might be seen through the slit of window. What might -be seen was the topmost branch of a tree and a gargoyled angle of the -great church tower, and above all a scimitar breadth of blue sky. -From that to turn and grave at a letter upon the wall; then to walk -again; then to rest upon the straw while the subtile body went free, -passed like an emanation through the prison walls and wandered in -foreign lands, and where there was neither land nor water underfoot. -At times he took under consideration his own present predicament and -earthly future. But the sting and terror were gone. That they were -so he thanked his higher self, his widening, deepening, marching -consciousness. - -His present case.... There had been the examination immediately after -his arrest and commitment to this gaol, the examination when he had -admitted the apostasy and denied the sorcery. But that had been weeks -ago, and since then naught. Day after day in this dusk place, and only -the turnkey had entered. - -This gaoler was a battered, sometime soldier, red-faced and -wry-mouthed. What romance had been in his life appeared to have come to -him with the dykes and green levels and waters of the Low Countries. -Chance leading him one day to the discovery that his prisoner knew -Zutphen, Utrecht, and Amsterdam, he had henceforth, at each visit, -plunged back for one short moment into the good old wars and renewed a -lurid happiness. The reflex, striking upon Aderhold, lightened his lot -as prisoner. The gaoler, after the first few days, exhibited toward -him no personal brutality. Once he made, unexpectedly, the remark -that he had seen good fighting done by all manner of people, and that -the Devil must have some virtue in order to make so good a stand. But -the gaoler’s visits were of the briefest, and he was close-mouthed -as to all things save the wars. If he knew when assizes would be, he -chose not to impart it. One day only he had been communicative enough -to speak of the commission named by the Privy Council. Who were the -commissioners? He named the members from this side of the county—two -or three of the clergy, several considerable country gentlemen. From -the Hawthorn end Squire Carthew and his brother and Master Clement the -minister. It had been at work, the commission, meeting and meeting and -taking people up. The matter was become a big matter, making a noise -through the country. They said the King himself was interested. A -bishop was coming—and the Witch Judge. - -“The Witch Judge?” - -“Aye, the Witch Judge.” - -But the gaoler would say no more—Aderhold was not sure that he knew -much more. He left the cell, and at no other visit would he speak of -anything but the Dutch and the good wars.... What he had said had left -a sharp thorn of anxiety,—not for the prisoner’s self. Aderhold knew -perfectly well how palely hope gleamed upon Gilbert Aderhold. He would -be done to death. But he knew also, from much observation, how they -dragged the net so as to take in unallied forms. He tried to think of -any at Hawthorn or thereabouts who might be endangered. He had been -intimate with no one; none there had been confidant or disciple. How -many that could save he had had occasion to note in France and Italy. -Speech with such an one, acts of mere neighbourliness, the sheerest -accidental crossing of paths—anything served for prosecution and -ruin.... In the lack of all knowledge he was chiefly anxious about old -Dorothy and the boy her nephew, and the youth to whom he had given -books. He never thought of Joan as being in peril. - -Counting the days, he gathered that assizes could now be no great -way off. Then would he hear and know, be judged and suffer. After -that—continuance, persistence, being, yet and for ever, though he -knew not the mode nor the manner of experience.... The gold light lay -across the cell like a fairy road. He turned upon his side, eased wrist -and ankle as best he might, and with the chain across his breast fell -half asleep. Ocean waves seemed to bear him up, a strong warm wind -to blow upon him, birds to be flying toward him from some beautiful, -friendly strand.... - -The grating of the key roused him. It was not the gaoler’s time of day, -but he was here, red-faced and wry-mouthed. - -Aderhold rose to his feet. “Are the Judges come?” - -The gaoler shook his head. “No, no! They’re trying highway thieves next -county. You’re to be lodged t’other side of gaol.” - -They went down a winding stair and through a dark and foul passageway, -then from one general room to another. The place was here dusk and -gloom, here patched with sunny light. It was well peopled with shapes -despairing and complaining, or still and listless, or careless and -noisy. The gaoler and Aderhold crossed a bit of court and came by -a small door into a long and narrow room where again there were -prisoners, men and women. - -“Stand here,” said the gaoler, “while I get an order.” He moved away to -a door in the wall. - -The place was warm and dusk, save where from high windows there fell -a broken and wavering light. There was a dull murmur as of droning -bees. Sound, too, from the town square without floated in,—summer -sounds. A fugitive memory came to Aderhold. It was years ago, and a -spring morning, and he was riding across the square with Will the -serving-man, Master Hardwick behind in the litter, ahead on his great -roan Harry Carthew. Upon the heels of that retracing came another. It -was last winter again, and he stood on a doorstep not far from here, -and ten feet away Sir Richard from the castle sat his horse and smelled -at his silver box of spices.... He came back to the present hour. -This place was long, like a corridor; it was curiously gold-brown and -red-brown, like a rich painting for light and shadow. He looked across -and, standing alone against the wall, he saw Joan Heron.... All noise -stilled itself, all other shapes passed. It was as though there were -spread around them the loneliest desert or sea-strand in all the world. - -Joan stood straight against the wall. Her grey dress was torn, her grey -eyes had shadows beneath them, she had no colour in cheek or lip, and -she stood indomitable. - -Aderhold put his hand before his eyes. “Mistress Friendly Soul,” he -said, “why are you here?” - -“For somewhat the same reason,” she answered, “that you are here. -Because it is a crazed world.” - -“How long—?” - -“A long time.... Nearly four weeks.” - -“Is it my misery to have brought you here?” - -“No,” said Joan, “cruelty and wrong brought me here.” - -“You are charged with—” - -“Yes. With witchcraft.” - -The gaoler, returning, began furiously to grumble that he would have no -speaking together, and urged Aderhold away. There was naught to do but -to obey; he went, but at the door looked back. She was standing with -her grey eyes and her sorrowful face set in scorn of this place and of -the world. The door closed between them. - -“No!” said the gaoler. “No questions, for I’ll not answer them. Say -naught and pay naught!—Down this stair. You won’t be so well lodged.” - -It mattered not greatly to Gilbert Aderhold how he was lodged. When the -gaoler was gone and the grating key removed, and solitude with him in -this dim place, he lay down upon the stone that made its flooring and -hid his face. After a time, rising, he walked the dungeon where he was -immured. He struck his shackled hands against the wall, pressed his -forehead against the stone.... - -The hours passed, the day passed, another night passed; another dawn -came, strengthening outside into burning day. The gaoler appeared for -a moment morning and evening, then darkness and silence.... He thought -that he must be yet nearer the great church than he had been in his -first cell. He could hear the bells, and they clanged more loudly here. - -Aderhold, pacing the space not much longer or wider than a grave, heard -in their ringing church bells far and near and deep in time. He heard -them ringing over Europe and from century to century. He heard the -bells of a countryside that had rung when he was a child and had loved -them well. He thought of the hosts who had loved the church bells, who -loved them yet; of the sweetness and peace and musical memory they -were to many—to very many; of the thousand associations, hovering -like overtones, thoughts of old faces, old scenes, old gladnesses. He -saw old, peaceful faces of men and women who had made their religion -a religion of love and had loved the church bells. Waves of fragrant -memories came to Aderhold himself—days of a serious, quiet childhood -when he had pondered over Bible stories; when in some leafy garden -corner, or on his bed at night, he had gone in imagination step by step -through that drama of Judea, figuring himself as a boy who followed, -as, maybe, a younger brother of the beloved John. It came back to -him—as, indeed, it had never left him—the soft and bright and good, -the pristine part, the Jesus part, the natural part. _Do unto others -as thou wouldst have others do unto you_—_Love thy neighbour as -thyself_—_I say unto you until seventy times seven times_— - -The church bells! The church bells! But they had swung him here into -this narrow place and dark, and they would swing him into a darker and -a narrower. They had swung Joan Heron there where she stood against the -wall.... The many and the many and the many they had rung and swung to -torture, infamy, and death! The church bells! They rang in the name of -a gentle heart, but they rang also for the savage and poor guesses, -the ferocities, the nomad imagination of an ancient, early people. -They rang for Oriental ideas of despot and slave, thrones and princes, -glittering reward of eternal, happy indolence, fearful punishment of -eternal physical torment and ignominy! They rang head beneath the foot, -and he that raiseth voice against this Order, not his body only, but -his soul and his memory shall be flayed!... Palestine or England, what -did it matter? Caiaphas or the Christian Church?... The searching, -questing spirit that, age by age, lifted from the lower past toward the -light of further knowledge, larger scope—and the past that, age by -age, hurled its bolts and let its arrows fly and rang its iron bells -against that spirit.... The bells rang and rang. He heard them sweet -and softened across the years and knew that many loved them and held -them holy; he heard them ring, jubilantly, above many a martyr’s stake, -massacre, war, and torture chamber, ring the knell of just questioning, -ring the burial, for yet longer and yet longer, of the truth of things; -and knew that many, and those not the least worthy, must abhor them. He -had loved them, too, but to-day he loved them not. They clanged with -a hoarse old sound of savage gong and drum and tube calling to the -sacrifice.... - -Between morning and midday the door opened and his red-faced, -wry-mouthed friend of the Dutch wars appeared. “Two of the -commissioners would talk with you.” They climbed the stairs leading -from the darkness, and passed again through that long and narrow room. -But though there were prisoners here, Joan Heron was not among them. -The gaoler turned to the left and, opening a door, signed to him to -enter a fair-sized, well-lighted room where were chairs and a table. -The light dazzled him, coming from the almost night underfoot. When his -vision cleared he saw that the two who awaited him were the minister of -Hawthorn and Master Harry Carthew. - - - - -CHAPTER XIX - -ADERHOLD AND CARTHEW - - -MASTER CLEMENT sat, tense and straight, spiritually girded to meet -Satan and his legionaries. Harry Carthew was standing when Aderhold -entered the room, but immediately he came and sat beside the minister, -his eyes, deep-set in a pale, fever-wasted countenance, regarding, not -unsteadily, the prisoner. He had risen from his bed but a week ago; -this was the first time he had ridden to the town. There was something -strange in his countenance, a look now vacillating, now fixed and -hardened. He held his gloves in one hand and drew them through the -other with a repeated motion. - -“Give you good-day, Master Aderhold,” he said in a controlled, toneless -voice. - -“Give you good-day, Master Carthew.” - -The minister’s strong sing-song pierced the air. “Thou guilty and -wretched man! We have left thee so long to hug thy own mind because -there was much work elsewhere to do! To-day we would have thee bethink -thyself. Thy sorcery at the Oak Grange and in Hawthorn Forest and -elsewhere is wholly discovered! Thy fellows in iniquity are all taken, -and sufficient have confessed to set thee at the stake! Why continue to -deny—adding so to the heat of that hell which awaits thee—thy doings -in this nature? What use to say that thou didst not, leaving thy double -in the constable’s hands, return in the storm upon the Hawthorn road, -and by the power of Satan affront and stay and with thy devil-furnished -dagger wound Master Harry Carthew?” - -“What use, indeed!” said Aderhold. “And yet I say it.” - -“Then,” said Master Clement, and the veins upon his forehead began to -swell, “thou art a foolish poor atheist! What! when thou art compact -of denial, and will be lost from earth and heaven because of that, -dost think that one denial more will serve thee? Come! Thou struckest -the blow, we know. What witch had come at thy call and was with thee, -standing on the hill brow, weaving and beckoning the storm?” - -“What witch?” echoed Aderhold, startled. “Nor I was there nor any -other!” - -Harry Carthew had not ceased to draw the gloves held in one hand -through the other. He sat with downcast eyes, wasted and sombre, more -wasted, more haggard, and overlaid with the dull tint of tragedy than -Aderhold himself. He spoke now with a flushed cheek. “Let that go by! -It matters not what hand struck me in the side that night—” He turned -on Aderhold. “That which I must know, and will know, I tell you—” -Shaken by passion he pushed back his chair, and rising moved with a -disordered step the length of the room. - -Master Clement could not let pass the first part of his speech. “Not -so, Harry Carthew! What! Matters not that you should be brought to -death’s door by the stroke of a wizard misbeliever—” - -Carthew again approached the table. “It matters not, I say. Unless—” -He stood looking fixedly at Aderhold, the breath coming quickly from -between his lips. “It has been confessed that you met these witches and -wantoned with them at the sabbats in Hawthorn Wood.... Now, I have been -sick and my senses wandering, and I have come but lately back into this -enquiry. Much has happened—much has been done—much has been laid bare -that I knew naught of. In particular—” He broke away, walked again the -length of the room; then returning, stood above Master Clement in his -great chair and urged some course in an undertone. - -Master Clement first demurred, then, though without alacrity, -acquiesced. “Is it well for you to be alone with him? I tell you the -Devil hath such wiles—But since you wish it, I will go—I will go for -a short while.” He heaved his slight, black figure from the chair, and, -moving stiffly, quitted the room. The gaoler stood yet at the door, -but, at a sign from Carthew, without, not within, the room. - -The squire’s brother had his own strength. It exhibited itself now. He -stilled his hurried breathing, ceased the nervous motion of his hands, -indefinably broadened and heightened his frame, and became the strong, -Puritan country gentleman, the future officer of Ironsides. Whatever -there was in him of stanch and firm and good so struggled with what was -darkly passionate that, for these minutes at least, there rose on the -horizon something that was not the tempest-tossed ship of many months. -The masts seemed to cease to bend, the anchor to hold again. - -He stood within five feet of Aderhold. He had moved so that the table -was no longer between them. In doing so, the attitude of advantage -and mastership had been lost. The two stood on a level floor, with no -conventional judgement bar between them. If in Carthew, beneath murk -and tempest, there appeared for the moment something basic, justified, -and ultimate, in Aderhold no less character unveiled its mass. He -stood in chains, but they seemed ribbons of mist. It was he that was -metal and real, and with a sudden loom and resistive force sent back, -broken, doubts and fantastic violences of thought and ascription. -Though for a short time only, yet for that time, the tattered farrago -of superstitions, hanging in Carthew’s mind like mouldering banners of -wars whose very reason was forgot, shrunk and shrivelled until they -seemed but featureless dust. For a time he ceased, standing here, to -believe in Aderhold’s attendance at sabbats, brewings of poison from -baleful herbs, toads, spiders, and newts, and midnight conspirings in -the interests of the Kingdom of Satan. Even the acknowledged, monstrous -sin, the extravagant, the unpardonable, the monarch and includer -of all—even the enormity of Unbelief—wavered in his mind, grew -unsubstantial. There was a fact of great force before him, a mass, a -reality.... But if, for one larger, saner moment, he rejected belief in -a supernatural bond of evil linking together Aderhold and Joan Heron, -he by no means did this with the possibility of other bonds—evil also -if they existed between these two—evil to him as wormwood, darkness, -and madness! - -“In particular,” he said, in a voice that thickened as he went on, -“I am told that they have taken Joan Heron. I had never thought of -that—of her coming under suspicion.... I had never thought of that. -I do not yet believe her to be a witch—though indeed they bring all -manner of accusation and proof against her—but I will not yet believe -it.... But I will have from thee what has been thy power over her! Tell -me that, thou atheist!” - -“My power over her has been naught and is naught. I have spoken with -her seldomer than I have spoken with you. I have had no association -with her. Why she should be in this gaol I know not.” - -“It is proved that the morning after you were lodged here she came into -this square, and stood before this prison, making signs.” - -“I know naught of that. What does she say herself?” - -“She says that she had walked to the castle to see one there, and -coming back, paused but a moment in the square. She says she made no -signs.” - -“And is it so hard to believe what she says?” - -Carthew drew a heavy and struggling breath. “There is a passion, I -think, that teacheth all human beings to lie.... It is said, and -loudly, that you came to Heron’s cottage by night, and that she went to -the Oak Grange by night, and that you were paramours.” - -“It is false. I neither went so to Heron’s cottage nor did she come so -to the Grange, nor were we paramours.” - -“That day I found you together in Hawthorn Wood—” - -“Do you remember what I said to you? That was the truth.” - -“Not one hour afterward I was told that often—oh, often and -often!—you walked together in the forest.” - -“Then you were falsely told. It was not so.” - -“Was the truth—and ‘is’ the truth.—You are earnest to clear her from -every shadow of association with you. Why?” - -“Why?” Aderhold’s eyelids flickered. “Why? It seems to me easy to know -why. I was not born of so low condition that I would see the innocent -dragged to a place like this.” - -A moment’s dead silence; then Carthew spoke with a regathered and -dangerous passion. “Others are here—dragged here for their own sinful -activities, and accused likewise of being your hail fellows and boon -companions. There are here a youth to whom it is said you taught -atheism, and Mother Spuraway and Grace Maybank and your housekeeper at -the Grange and others. Do you grieve for them that they are here?” - -“Aye,” said Aderhold; “I grieve for them. Piteous, wronged souls! I -tell you, I have had naught to do with them, nor they with me!” - -Carthew’s voice quivered, and he struck one hand into the other. -“Words are locked doors, but not the voice with which the words are -uttered! ‘Piteous wronged souls’ that my gentleman born of no low -condition feels grief for and would deliver if he might from gaol and -judgement—and Joan Heron whom his voice only trembles not before, -only caresses not because he would guard her from the ruin of his -favour!—What good to loom there against me and thrust that, too, from -you? You love her! You love her! And now I will know if she loves you! -And when I know that I will know what I shall do!” - -“You are mad! Her life and mine touch not, save as this Hawthorn music -jangles our names together! I shall presently be dead. I know it, and -you know it. Leave her living, her and these others! You have the -power. Leave them living!” - -“Power!” the other burst forth. “I have no power to save her. She is -bound with a hundred cords! Had I not fallen ill I might have—or I -might have not— But now it is too late. I cannot!” His helplessness -was real enough, and it made—if he would not feel it too crushingly—a -dark bubbling-up of heat, violence, murky and passionate substance a -necessity to him. He gave it way. - -Aderhold saw the change, the resurgence. He made with his chained hands -a stately and mournful gesture. “As it will be!” he said. - -The other burst forth. “Aye, I believe—I believe that you have -poisoned and corrupted her, and that there is truth in every word -they say! Now as I am a baptised man there is truth! For you are an -unbeliever and God’s enemy! And is not God’s enemy of necessity black -and corrupt and a liar to the last particle of his being, to the last -hair of his head, to the paring of his nails! More—you have stood -there weaving a spell to make me listen and well-nigh believe! Well, -your spell will not hold me!—As God liveth I hold it to be true that -you met by night in Hawthorn Forest—” - -“Look at me!” said Aderhold. “That is as true as that it was I who -struck a dagger into you on a Sunday night! _Now_ you know how true it -is!” - -Carthew gave back a step and went deadly white. There was within him -that root of grace that he had risen from his sick bed with his first -madness lessened and his mind set on managing a correction in the -minds alike of Hawthorn and the commission. In the first wild turmoil -and anger, pushing home under the half-moon from Heron’s cottage, -blood staining his doublet and his head beginning to swim, he had -seized—it coming to him upon some blast of the wind that he must find -and presently give a reason for his condition—he had seized the first -dark inspiration. It had answered—he had found on stepping from weeks -of stupor and delirium that it had answered so well and thoroughly -that now—always below the Unbelief and Blasphemy—it was one of the -main counts against the physician. He had thought to be able to cast -hesitancy and doubt on his original assertion. It was dark—the figure -was cloaked—it might not have been the leech.... He found that he -could corrupt no one’s belief that it was the leech—Hawthorn, his -brother, Master Clement, the commission, all were unshakable. He knew -not himself how to shatter their conviction. He could not so injure his -own name and fame, the strict religion, the coming England, the great -services which he meant yet to perform, as to stand and say, “I lied.” -He could see that even if he said it, he would not be believed. They -would say, “Your fever still confuses your head.” Or they might say, -“They are casting their spells still.” Or they might ask, “Who, then, -struck you?”... It was impossible.... Even did they believe it, what -would it alter? Nothing! The apostate and sorcerer was in any event -doomed. A straw more or less would make no difference. Surely one out -of the circle of God’s mercy need not be too closely considered.... But -he paled with the issue thrown so by the man himself between them. - -He paled; then desperately opened the gates to anger the restorative, -and jealousy that shredded shame to the winds. Moreover, there flashed -into his soul in storm a suspicion. “Who struck me? Knowest thou -_that_? If thou knowest that, then, indeed—” - -But Aderhold knew not that. He stood with folded arms and a steady -face. It was now to summon the ancient virtue, to play truly the -Republican, the free man, now to summon courage for others. Life! Life! -And what men and women had suffered would be suffered again. And still -the ether sprang clear and time stretched endlessly, and what was lost -here might be found there. He looked at Harry Carthew with a steadfast -face, and reckoned that the younger man was unhappier than he. - -The door opened with a heavy sound and Master Clement reappeared. -Carthew flung himself toward him, his face distorted. “Naught—naught! -And now I think the worst—I tell you I think the worst—” - -“I have always thought the worst,” said Master Clement. “Send him hence -now, and let us see these others.” - -... Aderhold moved before the red-faced, wry-mouthed gaoler through -the dark passageway and down the stair, back to the chill and darkness -of his dungeon. Within it, the gaoler made a moment’s pause before -he should turn and, departing, shut the thick door with the sound -of a falling slab of a sepulchre. He stood, to the eye a rude and -portentous figure, but to the inward vision giving off at times -relieving glints. - -“Everything goes,” he said in a deep and rusty voice, “by looking at -more than just itself. In another day in England or in another country -to-day, you’d have been racked or put to the scarpines till, when they -wanted you, we’d have had to carry you!” - -“That’s true enough,” said Aderhold. “One should have a grateful -heart!... True enough—as I know—as I know!” - -“It’s ten days to assizes,” said the gaoler. “It isn’t lawful to put -folk to the question in England—though if you stand mute, there’s -_peine forte et dure_—and of course nobody’s going to do anything that -isn’t lawful! But you know yourself there are ways—” - -“Yes,” said Aderhold. “Do you mean that they will be used?” - -But the gaoler grew surly again. “I don’t know anything except that -they want your confession. They’ve got a story that’s going to be sold -in chap-books all over England—and ballads made—and of course they -want all the strange things in. It’s like the pictures of George and -the Dragon—the more dreadful the dragon, the taller man is the George! -The town’s all abuzz—with the King writing a learned letter, and the -bishop coming and the Witch Judge.—They want a dreadful dragon and the -tallest kind of George!” - -“I see,” said Aderhold. “Even the dragon, the spear at his throat, -expected to flatter!—O Diogenes! let us laugh, if we die for it!” - -“Anan?” said the gaoler. “Well, it stands that way.” - -The door shut behind him, grating and heavy. That it stood that way -Aderhold found in the days that followed.... - -It drew toward assizes. Five days before the time he found himself one -late afternoon, after a weary, weary hour of facing the commission, -again in the long, dusky prison room where he had seen Joan. He knew -now that it was a kind of antechamber, a place where prisoners were -drawn together to wait occasions. More than once during these last days -he had been kept here for minutes at a time, and sometimes others had -been here and sometimes not. But Joan Heron never. One day he had seen -Dorothy, and in passing had managed a moment’s word. “Dorothy, Dorothy! -I am sorry—” Dorothy had gasped and shrunk aside. “Oh, wicked man! -Oh, Master Aderhold—” He had seen also the youth with a clear passion -for knowledge to whom he had lent books and talked of Copernicus and -Galileo. This one had not been fearful of him. - -To-day he saw neither this youth nor Dorothy. But suddenly, as he -stood waiting his gaoler’s leisure, he was aware of Joan Heron.... -From somewhere came a red sunset light, and it followed and enwrapped -her as she moved. She was moving with her arm in the grasp of a man -of a curious and sinister look—moving by the wall at the end of the -room—moving across, then back again, across again and back, across and -back.... Aderhold drew near, and it was as though an iron hand closed -hard upon and wrung his heart. - -Joan went very slowly, dragging her limbs, more haled by the man than -moving of volition. Her form swayed, seemed as if all and only its -desire was to sink together, fall upon the earth and lie there with -time and motion ended in one stroke. Her head was sunken forward, her -eyes closed. - -The man shook her savagely. “No sleeping!—When you are willing to tell -your witch deeds, then you shall sleep!” - -“Joan! Joan!” cried Aderhold. He moved beside the two. The man looked -at him but, stupid or curious, neither thrust him off nor dragged his -charge away. It was but for a moment. - -Joan opened her eyes. “You?” she said. “All I want is to sleep, sleep—” - -Her face was ghastly, exhausted. Aderhold uttered a groan. “Do they -not let you sleep either?” she said. “Five days, five nights—and I am -thirsty, too.” - -He managed to touch her hand. “Joan, Joan—” - -She looked at him with lustreless eyes. “The others have all made up -something to confess. But though I die, I will not. They may twist a -cord around my head and I will not.” A spasm crossed her face. “Of -their vileness they may set the witch-pricker on me and I will not.” -Her voice, monotonous and low, died away. The man haled her by the arm, -forcing her to walk. She reeled against him. “Sleep ... sleep. Oh, let -me sleep!” A door opened. The man with her looked up, nodded, put his -hands on both her shoulders and pushed her toward it. Her eyes closed -again, her head sank forward. Together the two vanished, leaving to -Aderhold a sense of midnight and the abyss. - - - - -CHAPTER XX - -THE WITCH JUDGE - - -THE WITCH JUDGE sat high; beside him his circuit fellow who was a -nonentity; a step or two lower a row of local magistrates. The hall -was large and high,—time-darkened, powdered with amber sunshine -entering through narrow windows. The commission that had so zealously -discharged its duties had a place of honour. The bishop was seated as -high as the judge, around him those of the clergy who did not sit with -the commission. The earl was away from the castle, but at an early -moment in the proceedings there came in his kinsman, Sir Richard. One -of the justices whispered to the nonentity-judge, who whispered to the -Witch Judge. The Witch Judge stopped short in a foaming and thunderous -speech and waited until the earl’s kinsman should be seated. His air -recognized the importance of the entrance; he slightly inclined his -enormous, grizzled head, then returned to his hurtling thunders. - -The jury sat in its place. Farmers and tradesmen, it sat a stolid -twelve, and believed implicitly that one who said that there was -truth in the Bible, and also that which was not truth must be hanged -or burned. What else was there to do with him? It had as firm an -assurance that your misbeliever was always your necromancer. Indeed, -you exhibited and proved the wickedness of his unbelieving by the -nauseous ill of his conduct. That was why examiners and commissions -sought always until they found the thread that led to Satan’s visible -ownership. As for the Hawthorn witches—the jury saw them hanging in a -row, and purposed buying the ballads that would certainly be made. - -The hall was crowded. It was the most exciting kind of trial that could -happen—barring only, perhaps, an occasional case of _lèse majesté_. -But this was also _lèse majesté_. They all saw God as a King with a -gold crown and throne and court; and Satan as a derision-covered rebel, -and his imps and servants very ugly—when they were not at times very -beautiful—and doom like a Traitor’s Gate, and hell a Tower from which -there was never any coming forth.... And it was good to feel such -loyal subjects, and to marvel and cry out, “Eh, sirs! To think of any -thinking that!”... The hall was crowded, hot, and jostling. Young and -old were here, full means and narrow means, lettered and unlettered, -town and country,—for many walked each day from Hawthorn,—birth and -the commonalty, they who held with the Episcopacy, and they who were -turning Puritan, zealots and future sectaries, shepherds and sheep! And -the neighbours of the accused—as many as could get here—and those who -had sat with them in Hawthorn Church—and the witnesses and sufferers, -fresh numbers of these being continually discovered. Now the hall held -its breath while a witness was being questioned, or the counsel for -the Crown spoke, or the Witch Judge thundered, and now it buzzed and -hummed like the bees that they said were bewitched. Heat, many bodies -in contact and a mist of breaths, an old, old contagion of opinion old -as savagery.... - -The Witch Judge was to most a fearful delight. No silent, listening, -seldom-speaking judge was he! He had a voice like rolling thunder and -an animus against just those wrongs judgement upon which had swelled -his reputation. He overbore; he thundered in where Jove would have -left matters to lesser divinities; he questioned, answered, tried, and -judged. He loved to hear his own voice and took and made occasions. Nor -would he hasten to the end, but preferred to draw matters out in long -reverberations. He was prepared to give a week, if need be, to this -trial which was concluded ere he took his seat. In all, in the Hawthorn -matter, there were eight folk to be tried. Destroy one, destroy all, -principal and accessories, the whole hung together! But he was prepared -with devices and flourishes, and for each soul on trial specific -attention and cat-and-mouse play, for the Witch Judge loved to show his -variousness.... The practice of the age was everywhere elastic enough, -but in no trials so licensed as in such as this. What need for scruples -when you dealt with Satan?... No counsel was allowed the prisoners. If -ever there was floating in the air a notion that the judge should be -counsel for prisoners, guarding them from injustice and oppression, it -had made no lodgement in this judge’s ear. - -The writ _de hæretico comburendo_! The Witch Judge thundered forth the -text of it, then preached his sermon. This wretched man, this wicked -leech, this miscreant, blasphemer, and infidel had made confession -of his crime of apostasy—the most enormous under heaven—confessing -it without tears, shame, or penitence! Confessing! nay, avowing, -upholding—The Witch Judge glowed fuliginous; his voice of horror -seemed to come from the caverns of the earth. “He denieth the actuality -of the Holy Trinity—he saith that the world was not made in six -days and is not composed and constructed as set forth in the Holy -Scriptures—he refuseth to believe in the remission of sins by the -shedding of blood—No language nor tongues,” cried the Witch Judge, -“can set forth the enormity of his error, sin, and crime! Let him burn, -as God saith he will burn, through eternity and back again!” The phrase -caught the fancy of the throng. It came back in a deep and satisfied -murmur. _Through eternity and back again._ - -On crackled and roared the Witch Judge’s thunder. Convict by manifold -testimony and impeccable witnesses, and wholly and terminably convict -by his own confession without violence, it remained—the authority of -Holy Religion and the Ecclesiastical Court being present in the person -of my Lord Bishop—it remained but to give judgement and pass sentence -upon the apostate! In regard to his apostasy. But this wicked leech -rested also under a charge of sorcery—sorcery of the blackest—sorcery -which he obdurately denied! Let him, then, before judgement given, be -tried for his sorcery—he with these wretched others, for Satan hunteth -not with one beagle, but with many! - -The Witch Judge half rose, puffed himself forth, became more than ever -a bolt-darting Jupiter. Trials for heresy, apostasy, blasphemy were not -in themselves wholly his element. But let them darken and lower—as -indeed, they almost always did darken and lower—into questions of -actual physical contact and trade dealings with the Hereditary Foe, -then he was in his element!... Wizards and witches! The Witch Judge -shook his hand above the prisoners. “And let not any think Witchcraft -to be other or less than Apostasy, Idolatry, and Blasphemy! If Apostasy -is the Devil’s right hand, Witchcraft makes his left—his left? Nay, -his right and most powerful, for here is your apostate in action—here -is your unbeliever upon his Lord Satan’s business!” Witchcraft! -Witchcraft! The Witch Judge paced around, threw lurid lights upon the -crime he battened on. His tribute of huge words rolled beneath the -groined roof and shook the hearts of the fearful. There came back from -the crowd a sighing and muttering, half-ecstatic, half-terrified, low -sound. The word of God—the command of the Most High, taken from his -own lips—the plainest order of the King of Kings.—_Thou shall not -suffer a witch to live_.... Statute of the first year of our present -Gracious Sovereign, our lord, King James—_All persons invoking any -evil spirit, or consulting, covenanting with, entertaining, employing, -feeding, or rewarding any evil spirit, or taking up dead bodies -from their graves to be used in any witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or -enchantment, or killing or otherwise hurting any person by such -infernal arts, are declared guilty of felony without benefit of clergy -and shall suffer death._ He had a way of uttering “death” that made the -word a distillation of all the suffering man could make for man. - -Preliminary thunders from the Witch Judge ceased. Counsel for the Crown -came afterwards like a whistling wind. The long Hawthorn Witch Trial -began, and stretched from midsummer day to day. To many it afforded an -exciting, day-by-day renewed entertainment; to some it was a fearful -dream; to a very few, perhaps, it seemed a long, dull, painful watch -by mortality’s fever bed. Once Aderhold caught the gaze of the earl’s -kinsman upon him. The eyes of the two met and agreed as to what was -passing, then Aderhold looked away. - -The prisoners had their appointed space. At times they were all brought -together here; at times the greater number were withdrawn, leaving one -or two to be examined separately or together. The heat and the light -struck against them, and the waves of sound; from one side came the -booming of the judge’s voice or the dry shrilling of the king’s lawyer; -from the other the whisper of the crowd that meant to have witch blood. -There were Aderhold, the youth to whom he had given books, the boy of -sixteen, old Dorothy’s nephew, Dorothy herself, a halfwitted woman from -a hut between the Grange and the North-End Farm, Grace Maybank, Mother -Spuraway, and Joan Heron—eight in all. - -Mother Spuraway—Now torture was not allowed in England, though on the -Continent and in Scotland it flared in witch trials to its fullest -height. Mother Spuraway, therefore, had not been tortured—no more than -Aderhold, no more than Joan, no more than others. But it was allowable, -where confession did not come easily, to hasten it with fasting from -bread, water, and sleep—all these being withholdings, not inflictings. -There might be, too, insistent, long-continued questionings and threats -and a multitude of small gins and snares. Mother Spuraway had been -long weeks in gaol, and she was old and her faculties, once good, were -perhaps not now hard to break down. At any rate, she had a ghastly look -and a broken. Since she trembled so that she could not stand, they put -her into a chair. - -“Now answer strictly the questions asked you, if you have any hope of -mercy!” - -Mother Spuraway put her two trembling hands to her head. “Mercy? Yes, -sirs, that is what I want. Mercy.” - -“Very well, then! Look on this man and tell us what you know of him.” - -The clerks’ pens began to scratch. - -Mother Spuraway’s gaze was so wandering that while it came across -Aderhold, it went on at once to a cobweb above the judge’s chair. “He -is the Devil,” she said. - -“You mean the Devil’s servant.” - -“Yes—oh, yes! Devil’s servant. I mean just what Your Honours want.” - -The Witch Judge thundered at her. “Woman! it is not what _we_ want. You -are to speak the truth. Truth-speaking is what we want.” - -Mother Spuraway’s head nodded, her eyes fallen now from the cobweb to -the judge’s robe. “Yes, sirs—yes, sirs. You shall have what you want. -Oh, yes, sirs!” - -“She asserts,” said the counsel for the Crown, “that she tells the -truth.—You were used to going to sabbats with this man?” - -“Yes, sirs,—sabbats, sabbats, sabbats, sabbats—” - -“Give her wine,” said the Witch Judge. “She is old. Let her rally -herself. Give her wine.” - -A gaoler set a cup to her lips and she drank. “Now,” said the Crown, -“tell us of these sabbats—circumstantially.” - -Mother Spuraway, revived by the wine, looked from floor to roof and -roof to floor and at the commission and the Witch Judge and the bishop, -and at the motes in a broken shaft of light. “We danced about the -burned cot—all taking hands—so! Sometimes of dark nights we went -_widdershins_ around Hawthorn Church—sometimes it was around the fairy -oak at the Oak Grange. Sometimes we danced and sometimes we flew. We -rode in the air. I had an oaken horse—and Grace had an elmen horse and -Dorothy had a willow horse, and Elspeth No-Wit had a beechen horse, and -Marget Primrose had a horse of yew—” - -There was a movement among the commission. “Marget Primrose,” exclaimed -Squire Carthew, “died years ago!” - -“She came back. Marget had a yew horse—and I had an oaken horse—and -there were other horses, but I never learned their names. And there -were green men—” - -“Was this man in green?” - -“No, no! He had on a doctor’s cloak. Sometimes he fiddled for us when -Satan grew tired.” - -“Then he was a chief among you?” - -“Yes, yes, a chief among us.—Sometimes we changed to bats and mice and -harmless green frogs and hares and owls and other creatures—” - -“You did that when you were about to go to folk’s houses or fields to -injure them?” - -“Yes, sirs, yes, yes—about to injure them. Then I was a dog, and Grace -a little brown hare, and Dorothy a great frog, and Elspeth No-Wit a -bat, and Marget Primrose—And we brewed poisons and charms in a great -cauldron inside the burned cot, but at the fairy oak we made little -figures out of river clay and stuck them full of pins. And there we had -a feast—” - -“And this man?” - -“He sat on the green hillock beside Satan, and Satan had a black book. -He gave it to him to read in while we were dancing and eating and -daffing with the green men—and then the cock crew and we all flew -home.” - -“There were many sabbats?” - -“Oh, yes, many!” - -“And this man was always among you?” - -“Yes, always among us.” - -“You say he read in a black book. But he likewise danced and wantoned -as did the green men?” - -“Yes, yes! The pretty green men.” - -“Be careful now. With whom especially did he work this iniquity? Whom -did he single out at each sabbat?” - -“Whom?—I do not know whom.... Sabbats? There are no such things. -Who would leave home at night to wander round oak trees and burned -cots?—Oh, home, home! Oh, my hut! I want to see my hut!” cried -Mother Spuraway. “Oh, good gentlemen! Oh, Your Worships! Oh, Squire -Carthew—Master Clement!—Won’t you let me go home? A poor old woman -that never harmed a soul—” - -The Witch Judge’s voice came thundering down. “Her mind is -wandering!—Thou wretched woman! Dost wish to be taken back to thy -prison, and urged anew to confess?” - -But apparently Mother Spuraway did not wish that. She put up her two -hands and said, “No, no!”—then, shrunken and shuddering, begged for -more wine. They gave it to her.... “Now, whom did this sorcerer take in -his arms? Was it the _maiden_ of your company?” - -“Yes, oh, yes! The maiden.” - -“The maiden of your company was Joan Heron?” - -“Yes, Joan Heron.” - - * * * * * - -The shafts of light were shortening, the earth wheeling toward sunset. -Without clanged the bells of the great church—it was late afternoon. -The people who had far to walk, though loath for the entertainment to -cease, yet approved when the court rose for that day. Morning would -not be long, and they purposed returning most early in order that -good places might be got. The hall and the square without seethed and -sounded with the dispersing crowd. - -Near at hand was the prison, its black mass facing the great square, -the pillory in its shadow; beyond, slanting down to the river, the -field where they raised the gallows. The prisoners when they were -removed were taken, guarded, along by the wall, into the dark, gaping -prison mouth. - -Joan walked beside Mother Spuraway. In the last three or four days the -hand of withholding had been lifted from the prisoners so that they -might get their strength.... Joan walked with a colourless, thin cheek -and shadowed eyes, but walked steadily. But Mother Spuraway could not -drag her limbs across the stones; a gaoler held her roughly up with a -force that drew a moan. Presently, his grasp relaxing, she stumbled -again and fell. Joan stooped and raised her, then with her arm about -her bore her on. “Thank’ee, my pretty maid,” said Mother Spuraway. -“I’ll do as much for you when you are old!” - - - - -CHAPTER XXI - -THE WITCH - - -THE morrow came and went in heat and tenseness and excitement. The -third day arrived and passed with no lessening. The fourth day came -and the fever ran more high than before. The Crown, the jury, and the -Witch Judge, the throng nodding approval, had now checked off Mother -Spuraway, Grace Maybank, Dorothy and her nephew, Elspeth No-Wit, and -the youth. It remained on this day to concentrate upon and finally -dash to earth the main sorcerer and that one who patently had been his -paramour and adjutant—the “maiden” of the wicked crew. There were -many witnesses and much wild testimony. Small facts were puffed out to -become monstrous symbols. Where facts failed, the inflamed and morbid -imagination invented. It was strange hearing to the two who had dwelled -at the Oak Grange and Heron’s cottage.... - -They questioned Elspeth No-Wit. “You had a meeting the night before the -leech was taken?” - -Elspeth laughed and nodded. - -“What did you do there?” - -“We had a big kettle and a great fire. Everybody dropped what she loved -best in the kettle. We played and clapped hands and jumped as high as -the tree-tops. When we clapped our hands, it thundered, and when we ran -around the kettle the wind blew our clothes away.” - -“You were brewing the storm that broke next day?” - -“Oh, aye!” - -“The leech and Joan Heron were with you?” - -Elspeth twisted her body and peered around. “Is that Joan Heron and is -that the leech? They ran round thrice to our once, and they kissed the -closest, and at last they wandered away.” - -Will the smith’s son was called. “You stopped at Heron’s cottage that -Sunday evening?” - -Will stammered, looking wild, hollow-eyed, and awed. “Aye, I did, -please Your Honour!—But I never would have stopped but that it was -storming so.—My mother was with me, please you, sir.” - -“No one means you any ill.—It was dark under the clouds without, but -there was a light inside the cottage—a red light?” - -“Yes, sir; bright like firelight.” - -“Hardly, I think, true firelight: a red and strange light.—It was well -after the hour when the leech had been taken from this Oak Grange?” - -“Aye, Your Honour. ’Twas close to dark.” - -“With the constable and his men, and Master Carthew riding a part of -the way, he must then have been upon the Hawthorn road, his face set to -this gaol?” - -“He must have been so, sir, but—” - -“We are coming to that. It is a fact, is it not, that witches and -warlocks are able to transport themselves, with their master Satan’s -aid, through the air—and that so swiftly that you cannot see their -flight?” - -“Oh, yes, Your Honour,” said Will. “They fly in sieves, and sometimes -they steal bats’ wings.” - -“Very well. Now you and your mother opened this cottage gate and went -up the path to the door, and to reach that you had to pass the window. -As you did that, passing close, you naturally put forehead to the -frame, and looked within, and the place being filled with that red -light—” - -“It wasn’t very bright,” said Will. “It was like a faggot had parted -on the hearth, and there was now a dancing light, and now it was dark. -There was nothing clear, and we heard naught because it was lightning -and thundering—” - -“And you saw—” - -Will moistened his lips. “Yes, sir.—She and a black man were -together—yes, please Your Honour, standing locked together—” - -“The black man was the leech?” - -“We didn’t know it, then, sir—How could we,” said Will, “when he was -three miles the other side of Hawthorn with a guard? But I know it now. -It was the leech.—And mother and I went on and knocked at the door, -and she opened it—and there was nobody there but Joan—Joan and the -grey and white cat.” - -“You stayed no time in that cottage?” - -“No, sir, please Your Honour. There was that that frightened us.” - -Will the smith’s son was motioned down. They set Mother Spuraway again -in the eye of the court—Mother Spuraway, wrecked until she was nigh of -the fellowship of Elspeth No-Wit. “You have told us that on this Sunday -evening you were running in the shape of a hare through field and copse -by the Hawthorn road. We have obtained from you that you saw the leech -part from his natural body, having by black magic so blinded the guard -that they went on bearing with them but a shadow, a double, and yet -unsuspecting that cheat. Now tell us what the sorcerer did.” - -Mother Spuraway plucked at the stuff of her kirtle. “He mounted in the -air.—Storm—storm—break storm!” - -“He went toward Hawthorn Wood?” - -“Yes, oh, yes! Hawthorn Wood.... Rue around the burned cot.” - -“That is, toward Heron’s cottage.—A time passed, and you, crouching -then in the hazels by the road, saw him returning.—Now, mark! Was -there a horseman upon this same Hawthorn road?” - -Mother Spuraway tried to mark, but her mind was wandering again. -She preferred, it seemed, to talk of when she was a young woman and -Spuraway and she had wandered, hand in hand, in Hawthorn Wood. But one -wrenched her arm, and said something in her ear and brought her back -with a shiver. “‘Horseman’? Oh, aye, Your Worships! A great, noble -horseman.” - -“You saw the leech coming across the fields from the direction of -Heron’s cottage, and you saw this horseman riding through the storm -toward Hawthorn Village. What then?” - -“I ran under the earth,” said Mother Spuraway. “For I was now a pretty -black mole, dressed all in velvet and blind—blind—blind—blind—” - -It was with a different—oh, a different, different tone that they -questioned Master Harry Carthew and harkened solicitously to what he -had to tell. All the crowded place leaned forward and listened, in -the hot, slanted gold of the fourth afternoon.... Joan saw them all, -and saw into their minds prone before the foreknown truth of whatever -Master Carthew was about to recount. She sat like carven marble and -viewed and knew the world she viewed. She saw Alison and Cecily, Will -and his mother, Goodman Cole, the forester’s wife, Lukin the carter, -the tinker, many others. She saw Master Clement and all the clergy -and gentry of the commission, the court, the spectators. She saw the -Witch Judge who was going to hang her. And townspeople with whom she -had had acquaintance.... The vintner who had wished to marry her was -here, pale and of a tremendous inward thankfulness. And servants from -the castle, and the new huntsman.... All here to see her hunted—her -and the others. She felt their tongues go over their lips, and the -warm indrawing of their shoulders and nursing of their elbows—felt and -cared not. - -Carthew was speaking in a hollow, short, determined voice. If a black -lava torrent of passion and madness was devastating his soul, few -enough knew it of all in that thronged place.... At no previous time -had there been such soundlessness in the hall, such keyed and strained -attention. Hawthorn, at least, believed that Master Harry Carthew was -to be a great man in England, was to climb high, with the Bible in -his hand. For the town, that was of another cast of opinion,—if it -conceived of him hardly so highly, if it shrugged its shoulders and -waxed bitter over these mounting Puritans, yet it felt in its heart -that they were mounting and gave to their personal qualities an uneasy -recognition. It, too, marked Harry Carthew for a coming man—though it -might not hold with Hawthorn that the fact of Satan’s striking through -the sorcerer’s hand at this life marked a recognition on Satan’s part -of qualities the most dangerous to his sovereignty. And Carthew was -young, and, though yet gaunt and pale and hardly recovered from that -felon blow, of a manly form and a well-looking face. All through the -long trial he had sat there so evidently poisoned and suffering—urged -now by his brother and now by others to leave and take his rest, yet -never going—sitting there with his eyes upon this murdering wizard.... -The throng was ready to make him into the hero, the visible St. -George—standing there now with his spear lifted to give the one last, -needed blow.... There was the dragon, there! the pale leech and all the -wretches with him, and dim and horrible behind him all his train of -evil works, and Satan horned and hoofed, spreading enormous bat wings, -making the very hall brown and dusky! Full beside the leech, in all -minds now, stood that most vile witch Joan Heron. - -Carthew’s words were few but explicit. “The sky was very dark—there -seemed more thunder and lightning than there had been. I was several -miles this side of Hawthorn. I was riding without regarding the road, -my mind being on other things. My horse stopped short, then reared. -I felt the blow. It was given by a cloaked figure that immediately -vanished.... Yes, it bore resemblance to the leech, Gilbert Aderhold.” - -The words fell, aimed and deliberate, like the executioner’s flaming -tow upon the straw between the piled logs. A stillness followed as -though the throng were waiting with parted lips for the long upward -run of the flame. Then out of it came Joan’s voice, quiet, distinct, -clear, pitched loudly enough to reach from wall to wall. “Thou liar! -Know all here that that man whom Will the smith’s son has called the -black man and saw through my window—that man”—she stood, her arm -outstretched and her finger pointing—“that man was this man who speaks -to you! Know all here that for weary months Master Harry Carthew had -pursued and entreated me who speak to you now—that when he turned that -afternoon upon the Hawthorn road it was to ride to Heron’s cottage and -break in upon me there! Know that Will the smith’s son, looking through -the window, saw _him_. But he, hearing those two knock, and fearing -discovery that would spot his fame, snatched up his cloak and made -off through another door. But he hid not far away, and when they were -gone and darkness had fallen, back he came, stealing in at night upon -a woman alone. Know all of you here that I wanted not his love. Know -all that we struggled together, and that I struck him in the side with -a hunting-knife. Know all that he rode from Heron’s cottage to Carthew -House, and to save himself lied as you have heard!” - -She stood an instant longer with her arm outstretched and her eyes upon -Carthew, then slowly turned, moved past Aderhold, and, taking her place -between Mother Spuraway and Grace Maybank, leaned her elbow on her knee -and her chin on her hand. - -The Witch Judge’s instantaneous thunder, the clamour of voices, the -hubbub in the hall appeared to give her no especial concern. When -silence was obtained, and Carthew, white as death, gave a categorical -denial, she only slightly moved her shoulders, and continued her -contemplative gaze upon this scene and much besides. That if the crowd -could have gotten at her she would most likely have paid with death at -once for her brazen mendacity, her measureless vile attempt to blacken -one whom the Enemy most evidently feared and hated, appeared to trouble -her neither. She sat as still as though consciousness were elsewhere.... - -The next day it ended—the Hawthorn apostasy-sorcery-witchcraft trial. -Judgement was given, sentence passed. The court, the crowd, the bishop, -Hawthorn, the town, all seemed well of a mind. Death for six of the -eight. For the youth who read too much and for the boy, old Dorothy’s -nephew, pillory and imprisonment; but for the six, death. Burning for -the apostate and sorcerer, the leech Aderhold, though, so squeamish -grew the times, he might be strangled first. For the five witches the -gallows—though it was said that the old woman Dorothy had sickened -with gaol-fever and would not live to be hanged. The sheriff would see -to it that the execution took place within the month. In the mean time -close prison for the evil-doers, and some thought, maybe, on how the -Church and the Law for ever overmatched the Devil. - - - - -CHAPTER XXII - -ESCAPE - - -JOAN sat on the edge of her straw bed, with her arms around her knees -and her eyes upon the blank wall. For something to do she had been -plaiting straws, making braids of many strands and laying them beside -her in squares and triangles and crosses. That had palled, and now -she was determinedly using the inner vision. The one thing she was -bent upon was neither to think nor to feel these past days, weeks, and -months, not to think or to feel at all closer than a year ago. She -could bring back, she could recompose, she could live again, though -with much subtle difference, where she had lived before. She could -image forth, too; she could guide a waking dream. Now, with all the -might that was in her, she made her prison cell to grow what once as -a child she had seen, the sandy shore of the boundless sea. That was -freedom, that was light and wind and space! Then she had raced along -the beach, and in mind she ran now, long-limbed, with flying hair, -only she turned not, came not back.... The Joan Heron here in gaol sat -motionless.... One by one she added the other prisoners, until they all -ran away by the sea beach, all hastening with the cool wind at their -back and the free blue sky before. She drew ahead. They were free and -running to some happy land, but their presence made it harder not to -think or feel, and so she ran ahead. Sea and sky, and harm forgot.... -One was running beside her, leaving, too, the others. She would not -image this one plainly, but they ran and ran, the sand beneath their -feet.... It never occurred to her that this _was_ magic, nor, if it had -occurred, would she have cared. It was good magic. - -The rainbow vanished, the storm returned. Here was the creaking, -creaking of the dungeon door; here came again the hateful gaoler, the -man who had watched her that she should not sleep! She did not turn her -head or speak; perhaps to-day he would put down the jug of water and -the crust of bread and go without attempt at parley. - -But he was standing waiting, his hand upon the door which he had drawn -to behind him. “Hist!” he said; “Joan Heron!” - -The voice was different. When she had turned swiftly she saw that it -was another man, a lean, nervous, quaint-faced man in a stained leather -jerkin. Across the years since the huntsman’s house and the castle wood -and the castle and its servants there shot a memory. “Gervaise!” she -said: “Gervaise, Sir Richard’s man!” - -“Ah,” said Gervaise with a jerk of his head; “you’ve got a good memory! -I hope that others’ aren’t as good! I’ve been out of these parts for -the length of two Indies voyages.” - -He opened the door, put out his head and glanced up and down the -passageway, then, with a satisfied nod, drew back, shut the door, and -came close to Joan. “But I’m Sir Richard’s man still, though not, I -would have you note, to the world—no, not to the world!—The man who -up till now locked and unlocked this door had a dream of a purse of -gold, and so yesterday he quit the gaol’s service with a speech to all -men that he was sick halfway to death with a shaking cold palsy! But by -good fortune he had a cousin to slip in his place. I am the cousin—for -the nonce, for the nonce! Hist, Joan; I remember thee well at thy -uncle’s there in the wood! I’ll tell thee what I once said to him. I -said, said I, ‘That niece of thine’s got courage and wit!’—Joan, see -this bundle!” He placed it beside her upon the straw. - -“Aye,” said Joan. “What’s in it?” - -“Good, plain apprentice doublet, hose, cap, and shoon! Scissors -likewise to cut long hair.” - -Joan’s hand closed upon it, but she said nothing. She looked at him -with parted lips and a light in her eyes. - -“Just so!” said Gervaise. “It’s now close to sunset. At nine of the -clock I’ll be here again. Put everything you have on—put your long -cut hair—into the smallest bundle you may. So, if I win you forth as -a youth, my helper—God blinding them to the fact that I never brought -you in!—they’ll find no stitch of you to-morrow. ‘The witch—the -witch hath vanished into thin air! No other one than Master Satan did -ever help her forth!’” - -“And when I’m forth?” said Joan. - -“One thing at a time!” answered the new gaoler. “A before B; bud before -flower! Roads may open. Here’s no road at all.” - -“And that’s true,” said Joan. “But all the others?” - -Gervaise gazed at her with his head on one side. “The others—the -others! How do you think it possible that I should make a complete gaol -delivery? It is not possible—not in the least possible.” - -“Why do you choose out me? And I thank you, Gervaise, but I think that -I will not go.” - -Gervaise looked at her with light blue eyes, not sharp but penetrative, -with a kind of basal, earth understanding. “You listen to me, Joan, and -while you listen, just bear in mind that this is a dangerous business! -Figure some authority out there storming, ‘Where, in Cerberus’s -name, is the new gaoler?’ Keep that in mind, I say, and that time’s -gold—gold?—nay, rubies and diamonds! Now, look you! ’Tis no easy -jaunt, forth from this prison and town, to some land of safety for -witches and warlocks! Naught but courage and wit and strength and good -luck by the armful will make it—and a crowd would never make it! There -are two who are not to suffer death—but if they tried to flee and were -taken, as, of course, they most likely would be, they would suffer it! -Common sense saith, ‘Those two are better where they are.’ The old -woman named Dorothy died to-day. She’s gone anyhow—made her escape -clean, with Death and the scythe and hourglass. Do you think that -Mother Spuraway could be dragged free—do you think that she could run -and lie hidden and disguise herself, and starve if need be? For Grace -Maybank—she hath pleaded that she is with child, and is not to be -hanged until the elfling is born. Naught can be done there. And Elspeth -No-Wit sits and laughs, and the sweetest words would not persuade her -forth.” He ceased speaking and stood with his light blue eyes upon her. - -“There is,” said Joan, “one other.” - -“Aye, aye,” said Gervaise. “Well, you see mine is the kindly feeling to -youward, and Sir Richard’s is the kindly feeling to himward. Not that -Sir Richard hath not a kindly feeling to youward likewise! But, I know -not why, he hath the greatest liking for the sorcerer!” - -“Aye,” said Joan. “And after?” - -“In fact,” said Gervaise, “and though I would not hurt your feelings, -making you seem of less importance to yourself, this is a rescue -planned in the first place for the sorcerer and not for the witch! But -when I am brought in—having, see you, watched you from a nook in the -crowd through the trial—I say to Sir Richard.... More than my saying, -the sorcerer makes some such catechism as you’ve been making, and will -only have freedom on terms. So Sir Richard nods and agrees. Double -peril! But if he will not come forth else? Then I may say that Sir -Richard, too, marked you, if for a witch, then a brave witch, and that -he hath a taste for the quality.” - -“Do you mean that Master Aderhold escapes this night?” - -“‘Escapes’!—’escapes’! I know not who escapes. It’s full of peril. -But Humphrey Lantern, who takes him bread and water, served under Sir -Richard in the wars. He’s weary of turning keys, and hath an itch to -see far countries. I know not; Fate’s got it all hidden.—But if the -stars are propitious, you might touch another prisoner’s hand on the -dark, windy road.” - -He stopped speaking. Joan took up the braided straws and laid them -again in patterns, then brushed them aside. She sat with one hand in -the other, her eyes upon the wall. Then she stood up, tall in her -ragged gown. “Thank you, Gervaise! If it goes wrong, save yourself, for -no worse harm can come to me. I’ll make ready.” - -The sunset light dyed the town, the looping river, the castle on the -hill, the great church, and the prison a pale red. The glow faded, -night came down. Within the prison every passageway was dim enough; -here a smoky light and there at a distance another, and all between -a wavering dusk. The new gaoler and a youth, whom he mentioned to -one they met as his nephew and helper, pursued these passages with a -slow step and a halt here and a halt there, as the gaoler’s duties -presented themselves.... But at last they turned a corner and saw -before them a low portal. “Win through that and we’re outside!” -muttered Gervaise. “I’ve the key—and it would make a story, my getting -it! Oiled, too.” - -Right and left and behind them they saw no one. He stopped. The key -went in noiselessly, turned noiselessly, the door opened outward, they -felt, instead of the heavy breath of the gaol, the air of the wide -night. They stepped into an alley, black as pitch. Gervaise stooped, -reinserted the key, and turned it. “Lock Discovery in overnight, -anyway! Take the key and drop it in the river with your bundle.” - -Joan touched his arm. “There are two men standing yonder by the wall.” - -Gervaise nodded. “There’s hope they’re Lantern and the other. We -agreed—” - -They crept toward the two. Hope changed to certainty. There were some -whispered words; then in the darkness the four figures stole forward, -away from the prison walls that towered like the very form of Death. -The night was black and quiet, but at the mouth of the alley as they -left it for the wide darkness of the square they heard voices, and -staves striking against the stones, and saw the lanterns of the watch. -The pillory was at hand; they drew into its shadow, pressing close -beneath the platform. - -Swinging lanterns, forms ebon and tawny, footsteps, voices, approached, -seemed to envelop them, passed, lessened in bulk toward the High -Street. The orange spheres of light dwindled to points, the voices -from frightfully hoarse and loud thinned to a murmur afar. The four, -Gervaise leading, moved from the pillory, friendly for once, and -struck across the considerable open place. The hour was late and -the townspeople housed. They saw no one in all the square. But as -they came into the shadow of the great church tower they again heard -voices nearing them—roistering voices of young men, petty gallants -and citizens’ sons, homeward bound from some place of drinking and -outcasts’ favours. “The church porch,” motioned Gervaise. Like swallows -they sped across and lodged themselves in the shadow-filled, cavernous -place. - -The roisterers came close, elected, indeed, just here to arrest their -steps and finish out a dispute. “Black eyes are best!” averred one. -“Grey eyes? Faugh! That vilest Hawthorn witch hath grey eyes! Ha, ha! -Eyes like Joan Heron!” - -“That she hath not! They are green. A grey eye is well enough! That -vile witch’s are green.” - -“Grey.” - -“I tell thee I saw them, green and wicked! Green beneath red gold hair.” - -“Grey! Grey as the sea, and hair like wheat when it is cut.” - -“Thou fool—” - -“Thou knave—” - -“Thou villain to liken my mistress’s eye to that of a vile witch and -devil’s whore! My sword shall make thee eat it—” - -“Will it? Will it? Out, tuck—” - -But a third and fourth, wiser or less flushed with wine, struck -between. “Will you have the watch upon us and be clapped up for whether -a vile witch’s eyes are grey or green? Grey or green or blue or black -or brown, ere the month be gone the crows will pick them out! Put up -your blades!—I told you so! The watch—” - -True it was that the watch was coming back. The roisterers fell -suddenly into hushed and amicable converse, began to move, too, from -before the church. But the watch were coming hastily, were already -within eyeshot of the porch. It was not so dark now, either. - -“The moon is up,” muttered Gervaise. “We should have been clear of the -town—” - -It was rising, indeed, above the housetops. The watch and the young -men were in parley, fifty yards away. The four from the prison pressed -more closely into the shadow of the pillars. They stood in blackness -and watched the full round moon silver the houses and the uneven floor -of the square. The moonbeams touched the portal, picked out the carven -figures that adorned it. Watch and the explanatory tavern group, -voices and glowworm lanterns moved farther, lessened into distance, -disappeared in the dark mouth of some street. Windows had been opened, -householders were looking forth. It needed to wait until all was again -peace and sleeping time. - -Aderhold spoke for the first time since the four had left the prison -alley. The apprentice youth stood near him. They leaned against the -one pillar, and though they thought not of it, they had among other -seemings, in the lapping light and darkness, the seeming of two bound -to one stake. He spoke in a whisper. “You are not afraid?” - -“No.” - -“I knew that you would not be. Little worse can come, and something -that is better may.” - -“Yes.... I had rather sink trying.” - -The moon whitened the carvings of the porch. Grotesque after grotesque -came into the light: the man with the head of a wolf, the woman with a -bat spreading its wings across her eyes, the demons, the damned, the -beatified exulting over the damned, fox and goat and ape crossed with -man and woman. The silver, calm light turned all from black to grey. -The wind whispered, the nearer stars shone, the moon travelled her -ancient road and threw transformed sunlight upon the earth. The minutes -passed, the town lay fast asleep. - -Gervaise moved from the porch, the others followed. They would not pass -through the town; they took a steep street which led them first down -to the river, and then, as steeply mounting, up to the castle wood. -They went in silence, with a rapid step, and came without mishap under -the shadow of the summer trees. Here was a wall which they climbed, -dropping from its top into fern and brush. Joan knew the path that they -took, a skirting path, walled with bracken, arched over by oak boughs. -They heard wild things moving, but no human tongue questioned them. It -was cool and dim, and because the moon was riding high and they must -make all haste, they ran along this path which stretched a mile and -more. Gervaise was light and spare as a jester; the wry-mouthed, surly, -one-time soldier strong enough, though somewhat rusty in the joints; -Aderhold was a thinker who lived much out of doors, a leech who walked -to his patients, and where there was need walked fast; Joan, a woman of -Arcady, with a step as light as a panther’s. These two had behind them -prison inaction and weakening, prison fare, anxiety, despair, strain, -and torment. They were not in health and strength as they had been. -But instinct furnished a mighty spur; if they must run to live, they -would run! They ran in the scented darkness, the bracken brushing their -arms, the moon sending against them, between the oak boughs, a silver -flight of hurtless arrows. The mile was overpast, the path widened into -a moonlit vale, the vale swept downward to a fringing cliff, by day -not formidable, but difficult in this gliding, watery light. The four, -with some risk of broken limbs, swung themselves down by jutting root -and stone, dropped at last a sheer twelve feet, and found themselves -clear of the wood and the castle heights, clear of the town, out upon -the grassy edge of the London road. It stretched before them, gleaming, -bare, silent as to the feet which even now might be coming after them, -silent as to whether or no they would outstrip those feet, silent as -to the ends that it would serve. They lay for a minute upon the bank, -breathing hard, regathering force. An owl hooted, _Tu-whoo! Tu-whoo!_ -They rose from the wayside growth and took the road. It ran so hard and -gleaming—it might be a friend, it might be an enemy! Over them soared -the night, far off they saw sleeping houses. The air was astir, the -shadows of the trees dancing on the road. - -They measured a mile, two miles. The road climbed somewhat; before -them, in the flooding moonlight, they saw a gibbet with its arm and -down-hanging chains. - -“I know this place,” said Aderhold. - -The wry-mouthed man wagged his head. “Creak, creak! Once I saw fifty -such in a lane, and the air was black with birds! This one’s stood -clean for a year.” - -It was like a letter against the sky. Joan stared at it. Her lips -parted. “I would cut it down and set fire to it, and warm some beggar -and her child.” - -Gervaise was looking about him. “The crossroads are not far from here. -He said—” - -“Stand still. There’s a horseman there.” - -Gervaise nodded his head and continued to move forward. The horseman -moved from the lane mouth into the road. Even before Gervaise turned -and beckoned, Aderhold saw who it was. “The man with the hawk,” he -said, and smiled. - -The man of the hawk and of the silver box dismounted, threw the reins -over his horse’s neck, and stepped forward to meet them. Road and lane -and fields, the heap of rock amid fox-gloves where Aderhold had sat -one summer afternoon, the knoll crowned by the gibbet—all lay bare of -human life, whitened by the moon. - -“Ha, philosopher!” said Sir Richard. “Places called of ill omen are -often just the other way round! Well met again, under a harmless tree!” -He put out his hand. - -Aderhold clasped it. “Poor enough to say, ‘I thank you, friend!’ And -yet enough when it is the very truth. I thank you, friend!” - -He spoke to Joan. “This is the man who opened our prison doors.” - -She came and stood beside him. “I thank you, sir. May you be through -all time a friend to folk and find them friends to you!” - -She stood tall and straight in man’s dress. She had cut away the -lengths of hair. A man’s cap rested upon the short, thick locks. At -first she made no motion to remove this cap; instead, as she faced -Sir Richard, she made, involuntarily, the bend of knee that formed a -curtsy; then, as instantly, she caught herself, recovered her height, -and lifting her hand doffed the cap, and stood with it held against her -breast. - -The man from the castle gave a genial laugh. There was admiration in -the sound. “Quick to learn! A flexible free mind—and courage! Good -youth, I seem to remember you at the old huntsman’s house.” - -“At times my father wrote for you, please you, Sir Richard. And twice -or thrice you came and sat in the porch and talked with him and my -uncle. And once it was cherry time, and I brought you a dish of -cherries.” - -“I remember! And then you both went away.” His kindly look dwelled upon -her. “I watched you through that five-days’ comedy in the Judgement -Hall yonder. I found it worth my mind’s while to watch you; no less -worth it than to watch this other that they called servant of Evil! As -for thanks, it is yet to be seen if there is much reason.” He spoke -to them both. “I am putting you on the road to the nearest port, and -when you reach it I can bring you to a ship there. But before you reach -it, you may be taken, and if you reach it and enter the ship, I cannot -answer for what will come to you afterwards in life. I may be no friend -at all.” - -“Friend, whatever comes,” said Aderhold. “If we die to-morrow, friend -on the other side of that.” - -“We’ll touch hands on that,” answered Sir Richard. “And now, seeing -that you must go on to the crossroads, I will speak while we walk.” - -They put themselves into motion, five human figures now upon the road, -and the horse following his master. The two escaped prisoners and -their helper moved ahead; behind them came Gervaise and the gaoler, -discoursing in whispers. The moon shone down, the wind took a harp-like -tone. - -“At the crossroads you four—Humphrey Lantern, that was a good -man-at-arms in the Low Countries, and Gervaise, a born wanderer and a -man of mine between long flittings, and one Giles Allen, a chirurgeon, -and John his brother—will take the road that runs to the port. If you -reach it or reach it not, one wiser than I may tell! Gervaise knows a -place where you may lie hidden to-morrow, going on at nightfall. You -may or may not save yourselves. On the way thither I can give you but -my wishes. But when you come to the port,—if you come to the port,—go -at once to the harbour and find out the Silver Queen.” He gave a packet -wrapped in silk to Aderhold. “Give the letter therein to the captain. -There is also a purse.—Nay, the thing must be done rightly!” - -“The Silver Queen.” - -“The Silver Queen, sailing to Virginia. I have a venture in her, -and the captain owes me somewhat. She carries a Virginia lading of -adventurers and indentured men.—In Virginia are forests and savage -men and wild beasts, but less preoccupation, maybe, with Exclusive -Salvation and the Guilt of Doubt—though even in Virginia a still -tongue were certainly best!—To Virginia is the only help that I can -give.” - -“I am content,” said Aderhold. - -The man of the hawk looked at Joan. - -“I am content,” she said. - -“Good!” said Sir Richard. “Humphrey Lantern is all for adventure and -a new world. But Gervaise, when he has seen you safely shipped, will -manage to cross to Ireland and take service for a time with my brother -there. Next year I’m for France, and I look to find Gervaise dropped -like an acorn on the road to Paris. But Lantern goes with you. What, -good Humphrey, is now your name?” - -The red-faced, wry-mouthed man scratched his head. “I hadn’t thought, -Your Honour.... George is a good name—George Dragon, Sir Richard.” - -The little company fell silent, walking in the moonlight upon a road -bare as a sword.... Behind Joan and Aderhold receded the old life, -sunk away the town, the road to Hawthorn and Hawthorn and its church, -the Oak Grange and Hawthorn Forest, people a many, the two Carthews, -Master Thomas Clement, Alison, Cecily, other names, folk a many, things -done and suffered, old life. Before them stretched something new, -strange life, bare as yet of feature as the road before them. Their -imaginations were not busy with it; they left it veiled, but yet they -felt its presence.... Undoubtedly, even at this moment, even earlier -than this moment, their escape might be discovered. Already the hue and -cry might be raised. Even now the finders might be on their track. They -might be seized long ere they could reach the port, or, having reached -it, before they could reach the Silver Queen. The Silver Queen might -be searched before it sailed. They might be dragged back. The gallows -and the stake might be cheated no moment of their prey. They might -again see Hawthorn faces. They knew all this, but their thought did not -dwell upon it. Their minds saw dimly something new, bare yet of feature. - -The man of the hawk walked musing beside Aderhold. At last he spoke. -“We are not far from the crossroads. When we are there you will go your -ways and I shall turn and go back to the castle.... If we grow by means -of all circumstance as it flows by and through us, how are you changed -by what has lately passed?” - -“This summer,” said Aderhold, “I grew somewhat past bodily fear. I -should like you to know that.” - -“I saw no great cowardice before.... How now do you feel toward your -fellow man?” - -“My fellow man is myself.” - -“And toward that which we call God?” - -“As I did.... I seek that which is high within me.” - -The other nodded. “I understand....” They walked on in silence until -they saw before them the crossroads. Aderhold remembered the ragged -trees, the dyke-like bank, the stake through the heart of the suicide. -The night was wearing late. The moon shone small and high. Charles’s -Wain was under the North Star. The five came to a stand, and here the -four said good-bye to the one. - - - - -CHAPTER XXIII - -THE ROAD TO THE PORT - - -THEIR side of the earth turned, turned with ceaseless motion toward -the central orb. There grew a sense of the threshold of dawn, of the -chill and sunken furthest hour, when the need was great for the door -of light to open. The road they were upon was narrower, rougher, than -the highway, with more hills to climb. The four travelled as rapidly as -was possible, there being a goal to be reached before sunlight and the -world abroad. Gervaise and Lantern swung on without overmuch effort, -but the faces of Joan and Aderhold were drawn and the beads stood on -their foreheads. Behind them were long prison, scanty fare, bodily -hurt, broken strength. Their lips parted, their breath came gaspingly. -They went on from moment to moment, each step now a weariness, all -thought suspended, the whole being bent only on endurance, on measuring -the road that must be measured. They did not speak, though now and then -one turned eyes to the other. - -Far off a cock crew and was answered by another. Vaguely the air -changed, the world paled, a steely light came into the east. Gervaise -looked at the two. “We’ll rest here until there’s colour in the sky. -We’ve come pretty fast.” There was a great stone by the road. Aderhold -and Joan sank upon it, lay outstretched, still as in the last sleep. -He had a wide cloak, she had none. He raised himself upon his hand and -spread over her the half of this. They lay with closed eyes, drinking -rest. - -Far off and not so far, more cocks were crowing. In the eastern sky -the bars of grey turned purple, then into them came a faint red. The -birds were cheeping in the tree-tops. The mist veil over field and -meadow grew visible. Gervaise and Lantern, who had been seated with -their knees drawn up, arms upon knees and head upon arms, raised their -eyes, marked the red in the sky, and got to their feet. Gervaise went -and touched the two. “Time to go on! We’ve got to get hidden before -Curiosity’s had breakfast.” - -They went on, the light strengthening, the air warming, a myriad small -sounds beginning. In less than a mile they came to a branching road, -rough and narrow. Gervaise leading, they entered this, followed it for -some distance, and left it for a half-obliterated cart track running -through woods. In turn they quitted the woods for a stubblefield, -plunged from this into a sunken lane, and so in the early sunlight came -before a small farmhouse, remote and lonely, couched and hidden between -wooded hills. “My granther’s brother’s house,” said Gervaise. “Stay -you all here while I go spy out the land.” They waited in the sunken -lane, the blue sky overhead. The wry-mouthed man busied himself with a -torn shoe. Joan and Aderhold knelt in a warm hollow of the bank, leaned -against the good earth. - -“_Giles and John Allen_,” he said. “Do not forget the names.” - -“No.... When I speak to you, am I to say, ‘Giles’?” - -“Aye,—aye, John.” - -“Do you think they will not know that I am a woman?” - -He looked at her critically for the first time. “You have height and a -right frame. Your voice is deeper than most women’s. Now that your hair -is cut, I have seen youths with locks so worn and of that colour and -thickness. You are pale from prison and unhappiness, but the sun will -tan your cheeks. You have mind and will, and all that you do you do -with a just art. Discovery may come, but it need not come—” - -Gervaise reappeared. “It’s all right! The old people will not blab, and -their two daughters and the ploughman have propitiously gone to a fair! -Now, Master Allen, and your brother, and good George Dragon—” They -moved toward the house. Gervaise jerked his thumb toward a barn that -showed beyond. “Good straw—good, warm, dusk corner to lie _perdu_ in, -back of the eaves! I’ll bring food, bread and milk. So you’ll have your -rest to-day, and to-night we’ll cover as many miles as may be.—This -way! We’ll not go through the house. Say we’re taken, I’d rather not -drag the good folk in more than ankle-deep.” - -The barn was dim and wholesome-smelling. The piled straw in the loft -felt good beneath aching frames. They made with bundles of it a -chance-seeming barrier, behind which in a fragrant hollow they prepared -to rest. Close overhead was the brown roof that, beyond their niche, -sloped steeply upward a great distance. A square had been cut for light -and air; through it poured vagrant, scented breezes, and in and out -flew the swallows. The light was thick and brown; it would take keen -eyes to see aught but straw, rudely heaped. Gervaise brought a basket -filled with homely, country fare, and then a great jug of spring water. -They ate and drank, and then set watches—one to watch while the others -slept. Humphrey Lantern took the first. - -Rest was sweet, sleep was sweet.... Joan woke sometime in the early -afternoon. There in a hollow of his own sat Gervaise, succeeded to -Lantern’s watch. He sat, blue-eyed and meditative, chewing a straw. -Lantern sprawled at a little distance, in sleep back, perhaps, in -the old wars. Nearer lay Aderhold, his arm thrown across his eyes, -profoundly sleeping. At first Joan was bewildered and did not know -where she was; then the whole surged back. She lay quite still, and -memory painted for her picture after picture. - -Presently Gervaise, glancing her way, saw that her eyes were open. -He nodded to her and crept over the straw until they were close -neighbours, when he seated himself Turk fashion and asked if she had -slept. - -She laughed. “Unless I was dead, I was asleep.” - -“He has not moved. Prison life’s a hard life, and then I understand -that before that he was up day and night with the plague.... Well, and -what do you think of the wide world before you?” - -“Is it so wide?” - -“That’s as you take it. It’s as wide as your vision, your taste, and -your hearing.” - -“I do not wish to be hanged.... It used to come and gather round me -when I slept, there in the dungeon, in the prison. First the place -grew large, and then it filled with people,—I could feel them in the -dark,—and then I knew where the gallows was, and hands that burned me -and bruised me put a rope around my neck, and in the dark the people -began to laugh and curse. And then I woke up, and my hands and arms -were cold and wet, and I said, ‘So it will be, and so the rope will -feel, and so they will laugh!’... Over and over.... But it did not come -to me here, though I was asleep. I do not believe that they will take -us now.” - -“Do you believe in witches and black men and Satan and his country?” - -“I used to. Isn’t every little child taught it? It’s hard to rub out -what they taught you when you were a child. But do I believe it now?” -She laughed with a bitter mirth. “My oath, on anything you please, -that I do not believe it now! I believe that some folk have more good -than bad in them, and a few have far more good than bad. And that some -folk have more bad than good in them, and a few have far more bad than -good. And that most folk are pretty evenly mixed, and that now one -having walks forth and now another. But that we are all folk.” - -“That presents well enough,” said Gervaise, “my manner of thinking. But -then I have lived long with Sir Richard.” - -They fell silent. A bird flew in at the window. The pleasant, drowsy -scent of the hay was about them, the sun-shot dusk, the murmur of the -wind across the opening. “Is your watch nearly over,” asked Joan, “and -were you going to wake him next? I am awake already, so give it to me.” - -“Nay, nay,” said Gervaise; “neither to you nor to him! I’ll sit here -for another two hours and think of the flowers I might have grown. Then -Lantern will take it again. You two are to get your rest.—I like well -enough to converse with you, but my advice is to shut your eyes and go -back to sleep.” - -Joan smiled at him and obeyed. She shut her grey eyes, and in two -minutes was back at the fountain of rest for overwrought folk. She -slept, slept, and Aderhold slept. When they waked the sun was hanging -low in the west. They waked at a touch from Gervaise. “Best all of us -open our eyes and pull our senses together! I hear the two daughters -and the ploughman, and maybe company with them, coming back from the -fair.” - -There were heard, indeed, from the lane, not far away, voices talking -freely and all together. Lantern crept to the window and with care -looked forth. He came back. “Country folk—five or six, and merry from -the fair.” The voices reached the farmhouse, entered it, and became -muffled. The sun dropped behind the hills. - -Twilight was not far advanced when there sounded a footstep in the barn -below the hayloft. The four, still before, now lay hardly breathing. - -The footstep approached the loft, halted beside the ladder that led -up. “Gervaise” said a quavering, anxious voice. “Granther’s brother,” -murmured Gervaise, and crept cautiously to the edge of the loft. -Presently he disappeared down the ladder, and the three, crouched -where the roof was lowest, heard a muted colloquy below. The farmer’s -voice sounded alarmed and querulous, Gervaise’s soothing. At last they -ceased to talk, and the old man’s slow and discontented step was heard -to leave the barn. Gervaise came up the ladder and crawled over the -straw to the escaped prisoners and runaway gaoler. The loft was now -in darkness, only the square window glimmered yet, framing a sky from -which the gold had not quite faded. - -“It’s boot and saddle, sound horn and away!” he said in a sober -whisper. “We had not been gone two hours when some officious fool -must seek the heart’s ease of Lantern’s company! No Lantern to be -found—all dark! No new turnkey to be found either. Whereupon they -waken an authority, and he’s inspired to open dungeon doors and look -within! Hue and cry! Town first, but with the morning light men -a-horseback on all roads.—They had it all at the fair—brought it -all home. County’s afire to bring the wild beasts back. Country for -as many miles as necessary will be scoured clean as a prize pannikin. -Reward for capture, living or dead;—bands out to earn it. All manner -penalties for any who harbour. The goodman here put two and two -together,—matched four with four,—and at the first chance, while -they’re all at supper, comes shivering out to warn us off. Granther’s -brother’ll not tell, but travel it is!—Humphrey Lantern, you take the -basket with what food’s left. We’ll need it. Toss the straw together so -’twill not show the lair. We’ll just wait till that last light goes.” - -They waited, felt their way to the ladder and down it, then out of the -barn. Voices were noisy in the house a stone’s throw away. A woman -came to the open door and stood looking out. When she had turned away, -they entered the lane and followed it until it set them in the wood -track they had left in the morning. Here they paused to consider their -course. In that direction so many miles, as the crow flew, lay the -port. Return to the road they had left at dawn, strive to keep upon it -at least through the night, and so make certainly the greatest speed -toward their goal? Night-time, and ordinarily there would be none or -little travel through the night, and that little easily hidden from. -But to-night the road might be most perilous; harrow and rake might be -dragging along it. Nevertheless they decided for the road. - -It was now utterly dark. They saw nothing, heard nothing, but the small -continuous voice of the hot, dry night. They were rested; to Joan and -Aderhold especially there seemed to have come anew youth and strength. -They walked steadily, with a swinging step, and the country fell behind -them and the sea grew nearer. They spoke only at long intervals and -then in whispers. - -“Luck’s with us,” offered Gervaise. “I’d almost rather see it more -chequered! Very Smooth always has a mocking look in her eyes.” - -Lantern growled in his throat. “I haven’t had much smooth in _my_ life. -It owes me a little smooth.” - -The moon rose. It showed them on either hand a rolling country, and -before them a village. The road ran through this; therefore, for the -time being, they would leave the road. They crept through a hedge -and found themselves in a rough and broken field. Crossing this they -pierced a small wood and dipped down to a stream murmuring past a -mill. The great wheel rose before them, the moon making pearls of the -dripping water. The stream had a footbridge. They hesitated, but all -was dark and silent. They crossed, and as they stepped upon the beaten -earth on the farther side, two dogs sprang upon them from the shadow -of the mill. They came barking furiously—the refugees snatched what -stick or stone they could reach and beat them back. One was cowardly -and stood off and barked, but the other, a great black beast, sprang -upon the first in his path. It chanced to be Joan. She caught him by -his own throat before he could reach hers, but he was fierce and strong -and tore from her grasp. His teeth met in the cloth of her jerkin, he -dragged her to the ground. Aderhold’s hands were at his throat, choking -his jaws open, pushing him backward. Over the physician’s bent shoulder -Lantern’s arm rose and fell, the moon making the dagger gleam. The dog -loosened his grip, howled, and gave back with a slashed and bleeding -muzzle. - -Out of a hut, built beside the mill, came a man’s voice, roughly -threatening. “Who’s there? Who’s there? Ill-meaning folk take warning!” - -As they did not answer, the owner of the voice burst from the hut and -came toward them, shouting to the dogs to hold fast and swinging a -great thorn stick. The moon showed a half-dressed, stout rustic, bold -enough but dull of wit, and still heavy, besides, with sleep. Behind -him came a half-grown boy. - -“Call off your dogs!” cried Gervaise. “We are seamen ashore, making -from the port to the town of —--. They told us there was a village -hereabouts, and we kept on walking after night, thinking to come -to it. But we think it’s bewitched and walks as we walk. Call your -dogs off! We’re harmless men, used to the sea and crossing a strange -country. Put us right, friend, and thank you kindly!” - -“What have you done to Holdfast? He’s frighted and bleeding.” - -“He pulled one of us down and nothing else served to make him loosen -grip. ’Twill heal and no harm done!” - -But a controversy gathered in the eyes of the miller’s man. “That dog’s -worth all the ’gyptians and vagrants and seamen between here and London -town! If you think you’re going round murdering dogs—” - -“I think,” said Gervaise, “that I’ve in my pouch a crown piece which -I got of a gentleman for a parrokeet and an Indian pipe. Let’s see if -’t won’t salve that muzzle.” He drew it forth and turned it to and fro -in the moonlight. “Ask the dog. Hark’ee! He says, ‘Take it, and let -harmless sailor folk pass!’” He slid it into the peasant’s hand, who -stood looking down upon it with a dawning grin. “Cross this bridge,” -asked Gervaise, “and we’ll be in the path to the village?” - -“Aye, aye,” answered the fellow. “If you be harmful folk, let them find -it out there!—Be you sure this piece is good? You ben’t coiners or -passers?” - -“We ben’t,” said Gervaise. “The piece is as good as the new breeches it -will buy.” - -They recrossed the bridge, stepping from it into the wood already -traversed. The boy’s shrill voice came to them from across the stream. -“Father, father! They’re four, and ’twas four the man told us broke -gaol! They ben’t sailors—they be the witches!” His voice took a -bewildered tone. “Only one of them was a woman—and they’re going -toward the town—” - -“What I be going to do,” answered the man, “is to go up t’ the house -and waken miller—” - -The dogs were still barking. The boy’s voice rose shriller and -shriller. “I know they’re witches! They had glowing eyes and they were -taller than people—” - -The four plunged more deeply into the wood. The confused sound died -behind them. They went up the stream a mile, came upon a track that ran -down to stepping-stones, crossed the water for the second time, and -once more faced seaward; then after a time turned at right angles and -so struck the road again, the village well passed. But the détour had -cost them heavily in time. Moreover, even in the night-time, there grew -a feeling of folk aware, of movement, a fear of eyes, of a sudden shout -of arrest.... They heard behind them a trampling of horses’ hoofs, -together with voices. There was just time to break into a friendly -thicket by the roadside, and crouch there among the hazel stems, out of -the moonlight. There came by a party of men, some a-horseback, some on -foot. - -“Four,” said one distinctly. - -“Shall we beat that thicket?” - -“They couldn’t have gotten this far.” - -“I’ll ride through it to make sure—” - -Man and horse came into the thicket. They passed within ten feet of -the four lying flat, but touched them not and saw them not.... When -all were gone the sorcerer and the witch and their companions came -forth and again pressed seaward. The dawn appeared, the sky unearthly -cold and remote behind the clean black line of the earth. It showed -a homeless country for them. With the first grey gleam there began a -traffic upon the road. They were passed in the dimness by a pedlar with -his pack, a drover with sheep. They saw coming a string of carts, and -they left the road again, this time for good. They lay now amid heather -upon a moor, and in the pale, uncertain light considered their course. -The miles were not many now before them, but they were dangerous miles. -They decided at last to break company and, two and two, to strive for -the port. Say that, so they arrived there, then would they come as well -to an inner ring of dangers.... But they all strove for cheer, or grim -or bright, and Gervaise appointed for rendezvous an obscure small inn -called The Moon, down by the harbour’s edge. It was kept by a man known -to Sir Richard. Get to The Moon, whisper a word or two which Gervaise -now furnished, and the rest would probably go well. The problem was to -get there. - -It was also to decide, if they divided, who would go with whom. -Gervaise looked at Aderhold. “Will you, sir, take Humphrey Lantern, and -Joan go with me?” There was a silence, then Aderhold spoke, “You have -proved yourself the best of guides and guards. But life has taught me, -too, to watch for dangers and in some measure has given me skill. And -she and I are the heinous ones and the desperate.” He turned his eyes -to Joan. “Shall we not keep together?” - -She nodded. “Very good.... The sky is growing red.” - - - - -CHAPTER XXIV - -THE FARTHER ROAD - - -WHAT were Gervaise’s and Lantern’s adventures they would hear when -they reached The Moon. Their own, throughout this day, led them to no -harm. They had been for long in the hand of Ill Fortune; it seemed now -that she slept and her grasp relaxed. The first outward happening came -quickly, ere the sun was an hour high. They were crossing a heath-like, -shelterless expanse, when a sudden _Hilloa!_ halted them. Two men were -rapidly approaching over the heath. - -“If we can, we will evade them,” said Aderhold. “If we cannot and they -would keep us by force—?” - -“They are not wrestlers nor giants,” answered Joan. “If they have no -weapon, mayhap we can give them as good as they send—” - -The two ran up, looked at them suspiciously. “What do you here? Who are -you?” - -“Nay, who are _you_?” said Aderhold. “We are lookers for a reward.” - -The opposing pairs stood and eyed each other. The newcomers were two -lank and unhealthy-looking, plainly dressed, town-appearing young men. - -“Fie!” said one. “We also search, but not for love of lucre and silver -pounds in purses! We would serve God by stamping his foes into dust!” - -“Which way have you looked?” - -The more garrulous of the two swept his arm around. “Unless the Prince -of the Power of the Air hath held them invisible to the eyes of the -Elect, they are not in that direction nor in that! My companion, Only -Truth Turner, and I were about to seek in the quarter to which I see -you are addressed. Let us, then, seek for a while in company. And what, -friends, may be your names?” - -“I am Relative Truth Allen, otherwise known as Giles Allen, and this is -my brother, Be-ye-kind-to-one-Another.—Four together, is it not so? -Three fierce, foreign-looking men, and a short, dark woman.” - -“We didn’t,” said Only Truth, “hear them described. But there will -assuredly be some devil’s mark whereby to know them.” - -They were now moving together over the heath. Each of the four had a -stout stick, broken at some time in their several journeyings. With -theirs the two townsmen now and again beat some clump of furze or -thorn. Once a hare rushed forth and away, and once a lark spread its -wings and soaring vanished into the blue. “Do you think,” said the -speaker, whose name was Wrath Diverted, “do you think that that hare -and bird might have been—? I understand that in the trial the Hawthorn -witches all avowed that they became bird or beast at will.” - -Aderhold followed the lark with his eyes. “I have seen human beings -who reminded me of bird or beast, and I have seen bird and beast who -reminded me of human beings. If that one up yonder is a witch, she hath -strength of wing!” - -The lark disappeared; the hare came not back. “Even so,” said Only -Truth, “there would be two left. But I hold that those were natural -creatures.” - -They walked through the bright morning, over the high bare world. “We -came out,” said Wrath Diverted, “to see my brother Another-Pays-my-Debt -who dwells at Win-Grace Farm. Yesterday came news of the loosing of -Beelzebub. Whereupon many made themselves into bands and went forth -even as hunters, and at dawn this morning Only Truth and I also.” - -“Let us keep our faces seaward,” said Aderhold. “You have looked that -way and we have looked this.” - -“Good,” answered Wrath Diverted; “but we should examine that dip in the -earth I see yonder.” - -They searched the hollow and found naught to the purpose, which done, -they went briskly on, but kept a constant watch to right and left. -“This heath,” said Wrath Diverted, “will presently fall to tilled lands -with roads and dwellings, byways and hedges. Then there will be places -to search, but here there is naught—Were you at the trial of the -troublers of Israel?” - -He spoke to Joan. “No,” she answered. “We heard of it. Everybody heard -of it.” - -“For my part,” said Only Truth, “I cannot conceive how a man when he -hath choice of masters should choose so scurvy an one! Here is a King -whom you may serve who, if in this world He seemeth at times neglectful -of his servants and niggardly in comforts and rewards, yet, when you -have come to the next world which is his true city and court, you have -his sign manual for it that you will have honours and titles and riches -without end! Moreover, your body will be happy and comforted, and you -will not again be sorrowful or tried, nor ever have to work, but only -stand and praise.—Not so with that other man, who will not kneel here -nor wear this Master’s livery! Comes King Satan and claps him, ‘You are -mine!’ Then mayhap he is led to a dance of unlawful and honey-sweet -pleasures, or is given a heap of gold, or is dressed in a purple mantle -and given a sceptre to hold, or is made drunk with worthless knowledge! -But it is all a show and turneth to gall and wormwood. For incontinent -he dieth. Nay, oftenest there is not in his hire the honey-sweet nor -the gold and purple! For the other King’s servant even here triumpheth, -and Satan’s man dieth a lazar and poor, even if he be not hanged, torn -asunder, broken on the wheel, or burned. Then goeth the wicked wretch -to his Master’s capital and court, even as the good man goeth to his. -But the one servant lifteth his feet in haste from burning marl and -findeth no cool floor to set them on. He swalloweth smoke and flames -and findeth no water in all hell. His flesh blackeneth to a crisp, but -is never burned senseless. A million years pass, and not one second but -he hath felt first pain and terror. Eternity, eternity! and never will -his anguish lessen. He looketh about him and seeth those for whom he -had affection—for like liketh like—burning with him, and about their -feet, creeping and wailing, the unbaptized babes. He looketh up, and he -seeth across the gulf the other King’s court, and the Happy Servant. -And the Happy Servant looketh down and seeth him, and his own bliss -waxeth great. Wherefore—” - -Wrath Diverted took the word. “Nay! You err, Brother Only Truth, in -using the word ‘choice.’ There is no choice, none!—that is, none on -our part. Attribute no merit to us who attain Salvation! Attain it, do -I say? Nay, we attain it not, we are _lifted_ into it. Another pays my -debt!” - -“Nay, I meant it in that wise,” said Only Truth. “A babe in the faith -knoweth that all are rightly lost and damned. Lost, lost! all are lost. -Five thousand and more years ago it happened! One day, nay, one hour, -one minute—and all was done and over! Then all souls sank to hell, and -all put on Satan’s livery. In hell are folk who have burned and howled -five thousand years! Lost, lost, all are lost! But the King, because of -the Prince’s intercession, holds out his sceptre to those among us whom -he chooses out. But we have no goodness or merit of our own! Miserable -sinners are we all, and the due of perdition!” - -“Precisely so,” said Wrath Diverted. “In Adam’s fall, we sinned all. -Wherefore they in hell, whether they be pagan or heathen or ignorant -or babes, have no reason to complain. But while all are guilty there -be some who have added rebellion to rebellion, and sewed the web of -disobedience with the needle of blasphemy! They be those who refuse to -worship! They be those who will not admire the Plan of Salvation!” - -“Aye,” said Only Truth. “Apostates, Sadducees, atheists, miscreants, -infidels, unbelievers, witches, warlocks, wizards, magicians, and -sorcerers! Damned and lost! They howl in the hottest cauldron and burn -in a furnace seven times heated!” - -So discoursing they came insensibly into a strip of country, green and -pleasant with late summer. Before them was a hillside with a parcel of -children at play, a dozen or more, and among them a big boy or two. -These now gathered into a knot and stared down at the pedestrians. -“Four—coming across Blackman’s Heath!” - -There arose a buzzing sound, half from fright, half from a sense of -exciting adventure. One bolder than his fellows called down. “Be you -the witches?” - -“Witches!—witches—!” - -“They be all men—” - -“Ho! Satan could make them all seem men! They pray to Satan and he lets -them turn what they will. Bats and red mice and ravens and horses—” - -“So he could! Witches!” - -“They be four, and they come running over Blackman’s Heath—” - -A stone leaped down the hillside. Another followed, and struck Only -Truth, who grew red and angry and brandished his stick. The assailants -shouted, half in fear, half in glee, and gave somewhat back; then -seeing that they were safe, well above the assailed and with the open -hill behind them, stopped and threw more stones. Only Truth would have -made after them, up the hillside, but Aderhold checked him. “Do not -fight bees and children—” - -They were presently out of stoneshot. But the children might carry news -and set others on their path. “Those escaped are four,” said Aderhold -to Wrath Diverted, “and we are four. It will not be convenient to be -stopped and questioned on that ground.” - -“I believe that you are right,” answered Wrath Diverted. “Moreover, -you and your brother are evidently country-bred, and walk more swiftly -than is comfortable for us who dwell in towns. Let us part, therefore -in amity. I see yonder a road which should furnish easier walking than -this growth and unevenness beneath our feet.” - -“Then,” said Aderhold, “we, being as you say, country-bred, will keep -on seaward over these fields and downs.” - -An hour later the two lay in a pit dug long since for some purpose -and now half filled with old dead brush, while a formidable chase -went by. These were mounted men, officers of the law, armed with an -accurate description, among them, indeed, a sheriff’s man who knew the -escaped by sight. They came trampling by; they looked down into the -pit as they passed, and thought they saw true bottom and naught there -but a litter of dead leaves and twigs; they checked their horses not -many yards from the opening and stood conferring. Their voices came -down in an indistinguishable hoarse murmur like the sea against the -strand. They shook their bridles and rode away.... The two, who had -lain half-stifled, covered by the bed of brush, stirred, heaved the -stuff away, rose gasping to their knees. Silence and the blue sky. They -crouched, eye above the rim of the pit, until sight gave reassurance, -then climbed forth and brushed from each other dead leaf and ancient -dust. - -“That was like a grave,” said Joan. - -Aderhold stood gazing, his hand above his eyes. “Far off yonder—that -is ocean.” - -“Where?” - -They stood in silence. About them was sunny stillness; far off lay the -sapphire streak. Tension—action—the mind held to an arduous matter in -hand—in the moments between, exhaustion, concern only with rest—so -had passed the time since they had crept from the gaol into the black -gaol alley. Now suddenly there came a sense of relaxation, then of -poise, then of time before them. Years—there might be years.... Even -that set amount and partition dissolved like a mist. They were going to -be together, and their minds placed no term. - -They were, the two of them, sincere and powerful natures. Now they -ceased to look at the ocean which their bodies would sail, and turned -and met each other’s eyes.... Another division melted from between -them. He had been to her a learned man, of a station higher than her -own. She had said “Sir,” and “Master Aderhold.” He was still, through -circumstance, more learned than she, with a wider range of knowledge -and suffering, with a subtler command of peace and mind’s joy. But she -had power to learn and to suffer and to weave joy; there was no natural -inequality. The other inequality, the unevenness in station, now melted -into air. Given substance only by long convention, it now faded like a -dream and left a man and woman moulded of one stuff, peers, unity in -twain. - -“The ocean!” said Joan: “to sail upon the ocean! What things happen -that once you thought were dreams!” - -“Aye,” said Aderhold. “Long to the height—imagine to the height—build -in the ether....” - -They moved toward the sea. The country was not populous. Avoiding -as they did all beaten ways, taking cover where they might of wood -or hillside, they seemed to have come into a realm of security. -They were faint with hunger. Before them rose a solitary cottage -bowered in trees. After weighing it this way and that, they went -forward soft-footed, and peered from behind a stout hedge of thorn. A -blue feather curled from the chimney, the door stood open, and on a -sunny-space of grass three young women were spreading linen to bleach. -They hummed and chattered as they worked; they were rosy and comely, -and looked kind. - -Aderhold spoke with his hands on the top of the gate. “Maidens, will -you give two hungry folk a bite and a sup? We can pay a penny for it.” - -The three looked up and stood in doubt; then one ran to the cottage -door. An elderly woman, tall and comely, appeared, hearkened to her -daughter, then stepped across the bit of green to the gate. “Be you -vagrants and masterless men?” - -“No,” answered Aderhold. “We are honest folk seeking work, which we -look to find in the port. We are not far from it, good mistress?” - -“Less than three miles by the path, the lane, and the road,” said the -woman. “You can see the roofs and towers and, if you listen, hear the -church bells.” - -They were, indeed, ringing, a faint, silver sound. Aderhold listened; -then, “We are very hungry. If we might buy a loaf of you we would eat -it as we walked—” - -“Nay, I’ll give you bread,” said the woman. “I or mine might be hungry, -too, sometime—and what odds if we never were!” She spoke to one of -the three standing amid the bleaching linen. “Alice! get the new-baked -loaf—” - -Alice turned toward the cottage. The two others came nearer to the -gate. The church bells were still ringing, fine and far and faint. They -seemed to bring something to the woman’s mind. “They say they’ve taken -the Hawthorn folk who ran from prison.” - -“Where—” - -“Two men came by and told us. A miller and his men and dogs took -them last night. They fought with fire and Satan was seen above the -mill-wheel. But they took them all, the two men said, and gave them -to the nearest constable, and so now the countryside can rest.” She -stood with her capable air of strength and good nature, looking over -the green earth to the distant town. “There must be witches because -God wrote the Bible and it cannot be mistaken. Otherwise, of course, -there are a lot of things.... I used to know Hawthorn when I was a -girl. And Roger Heron. More years than one I danced with him about the -maypole—for then we had maypoles.” - -“Roger Heron!” It was Joan who spoke. - -“Aye. I was thinking.... He’s dead of the plague. And his daughter’s -Joan Heron, the main witch. Life’s a strange thing.” - -Her daughter brought the loaf of bread and also a pitcher of milk and -two earthenware cups. The other girls left the white, strewn linen and -drew near. The cottage was a lonely one, and few passed, and by nature -all were kind-hearted and social. Alice gave a cup to each of the -wanderers, and then, tilting the pitcher, filled the cups with milk. -Giles and John Allen thanked her and, hungry and thirsty to exhaustion, -drank and were refreshed. - -But Joan, when she had put down the cup, moved nearer to the mother of -the three. “Did you ever see—the witch?” - -The woman, who had been listening to the church bells, turned her -strong and kindly face. “Roger Heron brought her here once when she was -a child. There was no ill in her then—or I saw it not. Roger Heron -should not have had an evil child. There was little evil in him.” - -The middle daughter was more prim of countenance than the others. She -now put on a shocked look. “But, mother! That is to deny Original Sin -and Universal Guilt!” - -The elder woman made a gesture with her hand. It had in it a slight -impatience. “I do not mean,” she said, “that we haven’t all of -everything in us. But Roger Heron was a good man.” - -“Ah!” said the youngest daughter, “how any one can be a witch and hurt -and harm, and be lost for aye, and leave a vile name—” - -“Aye,” said the second; “to know that your name was Joan Heron, and -that it would be a byword for a hundred years!” - -“I am glad that Roger Heron died of the plague and waited not for a -broken heart,” said the mother, and took the pitcher from the grass. -“How far have you walked to-day?” - -Aderhold answered. Presently, the loaf of bread in hand, he said that -they must go on if they would reach the port before night, and that -they gave warm thanks for kindness.... They left the friendly cottage -with the sunny spread of grass and the bleaching linen and the kindly -women. A dip of the land, a turn of the path, and all vanished as if -they had sunk into earth. Before them, fraying the horizon, they saw -the distant town. - -Aderhold spoke. “You were there when you were a child. Do you remember -it?” - -She answered. “I remembered at last—not at first: not plainly. I -remember the sea.” - -Her voice was broken. He looked and saw that she was weeping. - -He had not seen her so since the last time he had come to Heron’s -cottage, and she had wept for her father’s death. There had been no -weeping in prison, nor in that Judgement Hall, nor since. He knew -without telling that though she felt grief, she controlled grief. But -now, startled by a tide she had not looked for, control was beaten -down. All about them was a solitariness, a green and silent, sunny -world. She struggled for a moment, then with a gesture of wild sorrow, -sank upon a wayside rise of earth and hid her face. “Weep it out,” said -Aderhold in a shaken voice; “it will do you good.” - -He stood near her, but did not watch her or touch her. Instead he -broke the loaf of bread into portions and kept a lookout north and -south and east and west. No human being came into range of vision. The -slow minutes went by, then came Joan’s voice, broken yet, but steadying -with every word. “All that is over now—I’ll not do that again.” - -She came up to him and took a piece of the bread. “Let us go on. We can -eat it as we go.” - -They walked on. - -“It was Gervaise and Lantern,” said Aderhold, “who told her that tale -of a capture at the mill. They are ahead.... I have seen brave men and -women, but I have seen none braver than you, Joan.... Life is very -great. There are in it threads of all colours and every tone that is, -and if happiness is not stable, neither is misery. You are brave—be -brave enough to be happy!” - -The sun declined, the town ahead grew larger against a soft and vivid -sky. Now they could see the harbour and that there were ships at -anchor. They now met, overtook, or were passed by people. Some spoke, -some went on preoccupied, but none stopped and questioned them. They -entered the town by a travelled way, slipping in with a crowd of carts -and hucksters. Within, and standing for a moment looking back, they saw -coming with dust and jingling the party that had passed them lying in -the pit. - -They turned, struck into a narrow way that led downward to the sea, and -came upon the waterside in the red sunset light. A fishwife crossed -their path. “The Moon Tavern? Yonder, beyond the nets.” They came to -it in the dusk, its sign a great, full moon with a man, a dog, and a -thornbush on the golden ground. As it loomed before them, Gervaise -stepped from the shadow of a heap of timber. “Greeting, Giles and John! -George Dragon and I have been here this hour.—And yonder lies the -Silver Queen.” - - - - -CHAPTER XXV - -THE SILVER QUEEN - - -THE SILVER QUEEN, a ship neither great nor small, high-pooped, -white-sailed, her figurehead a crowned woman, her name good for -seaworthiness, ploughed the green water. Her sailors and the -adventurers for new lands whom she carried watched their own island -sink from view, watched the European coast, saw it also fade, saw only -the boundless, restless main. The ship drove south, for the Indies’ -passage. - -Mariners and all, she carried a hundred and sixty souls. Captain Hugh -Bard was the captain—a doughty son of the sea. Her sailors were fair -average, tough of body, in mind some brutal, some weak, some good and -true men. She was carrying colonists and adventurers to the New World, -accessions to the lately established settlement at Jamestown. Among -these men were sober-minded Englishmen, reputable and not ill-to-do, -men who had warred or traded with credit in various parts of the world, -who had perhaps joined in earlier ventures to American shores. These -carried with them labourers, indentured servants, perhaps a penniless -kinsman or two, discontented at home. The mass of those upon the Silver -Queen were followers and indentured men. But there were likewise -adventurers going singly, free lances, with enough or just enough to -pay passage, men all for change and roving, or dare-devil men, or men -with wild fancies, hopes, ambitions, intents, or men merely leaving -worst things for a conjectural better. Also there were a few who -thought to practise their professions in the new settlement, a barber -and perfumer, a musician, a teacher, a lawyer, and a divine. It was an -average swarm from old England, in the early years of colonization. - -Aboard was but one woman, and she was not known as a woman. She was -called John Allen, and went as the still-mouthed and loneliness-loving -brother of the chirurgeon Giles Allen. In the first days the latter had -stated to a group, from which John Allen had risen and gone away, that -his brother was but now recovering from a melancholy brought about by -the death of one whom he had loved. Now those aboard were not beasts, -but men with, in the main, answering hearts to lovers’ joys and woes. -For the most part not over-observant or critical, and with their own -matters much in mind, they took the statement as it was given them and -allowed to John Allen silence and solitude—such silence and solitude -as were obtainable. Silence and solitude were all around upon the great -sea, but the ship was a hive adrift. - -Captain Hugh Bard was under obligations to Sir Richard. Clients of Sir -Richard—nothing known but that they were folk whom that knight was -willing to help from England—were sure of his blunt good offices. -Moreover, the ship’s doctor fell ill, whereupon Giles Allen offered his -services, there being much sickness among the colonists. The captain -nodded, found that he had aboard a skilled physician, and took a liking -to the man himself. Aderhold asked no favours for himself, and none -that might arouse suspicion for her who passed as his brother. But -yet, with a refinement of skill, he managed to obtain for her what she -wanted in that throng of men—a little space, a little distance. - -She never added difficulty to their situation. She was no fine lady. -She was yeoman born and bred, courageous and sane. It was yet the -evening glow of the strong Elizabethan age. Men and women were more -frank and free in one another’s company than grew to be the case in a -later period. The wife or mistress, sometimes the sister, in the dress -of page or squire, fellow traveller, attendant at court, sometimes -fellow soldier, made a commonplace of the age’s stage-play or romantic -tale. If the masquerade occurred oftener in poem or play than in fact, -yet in the last-named, too, it occurred. - -Joan had native wit. Her being, simple-seeming, pushed forward -complexes enough when it came to the touch. Aderhold marvelled to -see her so skilful and wary, and still so quiet with it all that she -seemed to act without motion, or with motion too swift for perception. -She went unsuspected of all—a tall, fair youth with grey eyes and a -manner of reserve, brooding aside over some loss of his own. - -Giles Allen, John Allen, George Dragon—it was George Dragon, Aderhold -came to see, who furnished the danger point.—Humphrey Lantern was -no artist to put forward a self complete, yet not your home and most -familiar self. He had no considerable rôle to play; he was merely -George Dragon, an old soldier of the Dutch Wars, who since had knocked -about as best he might, and now would try his fortune in Virginia. He -was at liberty to talk of the good wars and the Low Countries all he -wished. He sought the forecastle and the company of the ruder sort and -he talked of these. But he was forgetful, and at times the near past -would trip up the far past. Never the very near past, but Aderhold -had heard him let slip that for part time since the good wars, he had -served as a gaoler—“head man in a good prison,” he put it with a grim -touch of pride. Aderhold thought that some one had given him usquebaugh -to drink. When he cautioned him, as he earnestly did at the first -chance, Lantern could not remember that he had said any such thing, -but, being sober, he agreed that the least thing might be spark to -gunpowder, and that their lives depended upon discretion. He promised -and for some time Aderhold observed him exercising due caution. But the -fear remained, and the knowledge that Lantern would drink if tempted, -and drunken knew not what he said. - -At first they had a favouring wind and seas not rough or over-smooth. -The ship bore strongly on, and the spirits of most aboard were good. -Now and then broke out revelry and boisterousness, but the men of -weight kept rule among their followers, and Captain Hugh Bard would -have order where he commanded. The wilder sort, of whom there were -enough aboard, must content themselves with suppressed quarrels, secret -gaming, a murmur of feverish and unstable talk and conjecture. There -were those who, wherever they were, must have excitement to feed upon. -Their daily life must be peppered with a liberal hand, heightened to -a fevered and whirling motion with no line of advance. These were -restless, and spread their restlessness upon the Silver Queen. But -there was much stolidity aboard, and at first and for many days it -counteracted. - -The wind blew, the sails filled, they drove cheerily on. They came to -the Canaries, on the old passage, then drove westward. Days passed, -many days. They came to where they might begin to look for islands. -And here a storm took them and carried them out of their reckoning, -and here their luck fell away from them. The storm was outlasted, but -after it there befell a calm. The wind failed, sank away until there -was not a breath. Sullen and stubborn, the calm lasted, weary day after -weary day. The sails hung lank, the water made not even a small lipping -sound, the crowned woman at the prow stood full length and steady, -staring at a glassy floor. The sea was oil, the sky brazen, and the -spirits flagged like the flagging sails. Day after day, day after day... - -At dawn one morning Aderhold and Joan leaned against the rail and -looked at the purple sea. It lay like a vast gem, moveless and hard. -The folk upon the ship were still sleeping. The seamen aloft in the -rigging or moving upon the decks troubled them not, hardly looked their -way. - -“If you held a feather before you,” said Joan, “it would not move a -hair’s breadth! They are to pray for a wind to-day. Master Evans will -pray—all aboard will pray. Is it chained somewhere, or idle or asleep, -or locked in a chest, and will we turn the key that way?” - -“Did you see or speak to George Dragon yesterday?” - -“No. Why?” - -“Some of these men brought _aqua vitæ_ or usquebaugh aboard with them. -He games for it and wins. And then his tongue wags more than it should.” - -“I did not know.... Danger, again?” - -“Yes. He thinks he has done no harm, then is alarmed, penitent, -protests that he will not—and then it’s all done again.... Poor human -weakness!” - -“And if—?” - -“We will not look at that now,” said Aderhold. “It would unroll itself -soon enough.—Joan, Joan! I would that you were safe!” - -“I am safe. I would that you—” - -“I will match your ‘I am safe.’ I, too, am safe. Nothing here can -quench the eternal, flowing life! But until we have lifted this level -and built more highly we shall feel its pains ... and feel them for one -another. And now I ache for your danger.” - -The east was carmine, the sea from purple turned carmine—carmine -eastward from the Silver Queen to the horizon; elsewhere a burnished -play of greens and blues, a vast plain, still, still! It flowed around -and away to the burning horizon, and not a sail and not a breath, and -no sound in the cordage overhead. The deepening light flowed between -Joan and Aderhold, and in it, suddenly, the body of each was beautiful -in the other’s eyes.... The sun came up, a red-gold ball. Neither man -nor woman had spoken, and now, suddenly, too, with the full dayspring, -the ship was astir, men were upon the decks. Gilbert Aderhold, Joan -Heron stepped back into the violet shadow; here were Giles and John -Allen. - -Up to these now came Master Evans, the minister bound for Jamestown, -a stout, gentle-faced man in a sad-coloured suit. “Fast as though -the ship were in the stocks!” he said. “But if the Lord is gracious, -we will pray her free! Breakfast done, we will gather together and -make hearty supplication.” He looked across to the sun, mailed now -in diamond, mounting blinding and fierce. The sweet coolness of the -earlier hour was gone; wave on wave came heat, heat, heat! Master -Evans clasped more closely the Bible in his hand. “Thou sun whom for -Israel’s sake the Lord halted in thy course and held thee nailed fast -above Gibeon! Dost thou think if He chooses now to veil thy face with -cloud and to blow thy rays aside, thou canst prevent? And thou hot and -moveless air, if He choose to drive thee against the stern of this -ship and into the hollow of these sails, wilt thou make objection? -Nay, verily! And why should He not choose? Here upon this ship are not -infidels and heathen, but his own servants and sheep! Wherefore we will -kneel and beseech Him, and perchance a miracle may fall like manna.” - -He looked smilingly about him, then, pressing his Bible closely, went -on to other emigrants.... Later in the morning all upon the Silver -Queen were drawn together to make petition for a prospering wind. All -save the sick were there. Giles and John Allen stood with the others, -knelt with the others. “Have we not a chronicle of Thy deeds,” prayed -Master Evans. “Didst Thou not make a dry road through an ocean for a -chosen people? Didst Thou not, at the Tower of Babel, in one hour shake -one language into all the tongues that are heard upon the earth? Didst -Thou not enable Noah to bring into the Ark in pairs all the beasts of -this whole earth? Didst Thou not turn a woman into a pillar of salt, -and give powers of speech to an ass, and preserve three men unsinged -in a fiery furnace? Didst Thou not direct the dew on the one night to -moisten only the fleece of Gideon and not any of the earth besides, and -on the next night to glisten over the face of the earth, but to leave -the fleece unmoistened? And are not we thy servants even as were Gideon -and Lot and Noah?...” - -The calm held. A sky of brass, an oily sea, heat and heat, and now -more sickness, and now an uneasy whisper as to the store of water! The -whisper grew, for the ship lay still, day after day, as though she had -never moved nor ever would do so. Panic terror came and hovered near -the Silver Queen. Captain Bard fell ill, lay in fever and delirium.... -The mate took command—no second Captain Bard, but a frightened man -himself. There was aboard a half-crazed fellow who began to talk of -Ill-Luck. “The ship hath Ill-Luck. Who brought it aboard? Seek it out -and tie it to the mast and shoot it with your arquebuse! Then, mayhap, -the wind will blow.” He laughed and mouthed of Ill-Luck, until crew and -passengers all but saw a shadowy figure. Time crawled by, and the calm -held and the panic grew. - -There came an hour when the bolt fell, foreseen by Aderhold. Before it -ran a whisper; then there fell a pause and an ominous quiet; then burst -the voices, fast and thick. It was afternoon, the sun not far from the -horizon, the sea red glass. Aderhold came up on deck from the captain’s -cabin. He looked about him and saw a crowd drawn together. Out of -it issued a loud voice. “Ill-Luck? What marvel there is ill-luck?” -Noise mounted. The half-crazed fellow suddenly began to shrill out, -“Ill-Luck! Ill-Luck! There she sits!” He burst from the throng and -pointed with his finger. Away from the stir, on a great coil of rope -near a slung boat, there sat, looking out to sea, John Allen. - -The mate, with him several of the more authoritative adventurers and -also Master Evans, came out of the state cabin. “What’s all this? What -has happened?” - -A man of the wilder sort aboard, a ruffler and gamester, was pushed -forward by the swarm. “My masters, there’s one aboard named George -Dragon who, being somewhat drunk, hath let drop news that we hold hath -a bearing upon this ship’s poor fortune! He saith that we carry escaped -prisoners—runaways from the King’s justice—rebels, too, to religion—” - -“Ill Luck! Ill Luck! There sits Ill Luck!” cried the half-crazed one, -and pointed again. - -The swarm began to speak with a general voice. “And we say that we -won’t get a wind, but will lie here until water is gone and we die of -thirst and rot and sink.... If we’ve got men aboard who are bringing -misfortune on us.... Twelve days lying here and not a breath! The -captain ill and twenty men besides, and the water low.... There’s -Scripture for it.... What’s the good of praying for a wind, if all the -time we’re harbouring his foes?... Held here, as though we were nailed -to the sea floor, and the water low! The ship’s cursed.... We want -George Dragon made to tell their names—” - -Suddenly George Dragon himself was among them—red-faced and -wry-mouthed, but to-day thick-tongued also and stumbling. He -looked about him wildly. “What’s all this chattering? Talking like -monkeys!—Waked me up—but I won and he paid—good stuff—” He saw -Aderhold and lurched toward him. When he was near he spoke and imagined -that none else could hear him. “Don’t look so grimly upon me, Master -Aderhold!” he said. “I’ve dropped not a word, as I told you I wouldn’t. -’Zooks! I’m not one to peach—” - -_Aderhold!_ With one sharp sound the name ran through the swarm. “Not -Allen!—_Aderhold_....” There were those here from that port town and -the surrounding country,—those who had heard that name before. A man -cried out, “Aderhold! That was the sorcerer who was to be burned!” -Another: “They escaped—The sorcerer and apostate and the witch Joan -Heron—” - -“Ill Luck! Ill Luck!” cried the Bedlamite. “There she stands!” - -John Allen had risen from the coil of rope and stood against the slung -boat. The throng swung its body that way, hung suspended one long -moment, open-mouthed, wide-eyed, then with a roaring cry-flung itself -across the space between. Aderhold reached her side, but the throng -came, too, hurled him down and laid hands upon her. One clutched her -shirt and jerkin and tore them across. She stood a woman revealed. - -“The witch! The witch!” they roared and struck her to the deck. - -The mate was not the man that was the captain, but he knew what the -captain would do, and where he was able he copied. The few superior -colonists were not superior to witch-fear, but they had a preference -for orderly judgement and execution. Master Evans was of a timid -and gentle nature and abhorred with his bodily eyes to see violence -done. He believed devoutly that in the interests of holiness witches, -infidels, and sorcerers must be put to death, but he would not -willingly himself behold the act which his religion approved. There -were others aboard amenable to discipline, and bold enough to escape -panic over mere delay. The sorcerer and the witch were drawn from the -hands of the more enraged. Their arms were bound across; they were -thrust into the ship’s dungeon. With them went Humphrey Lantern, sober -enough now—poor wry-mouthed man!... In the state cabin there was -held a council. “Keep the wretches close under hatches until Virginia -is reached,” said the cooler sense. “Then let the officers of the -settlement hang them, on dry land and after solemn judgement. Or let -them be prisoned in Jamestown until a ship is sailing home, taken -back to England, and hanged there. If, as may well be the case, the -Silver Queen hath been cursed for their sakes, surely now that they are -ironed there below, and their doom certain in the end, the Almighty -will lift the curse! At least, wait and see if the calm be not -broken.” Within the cabin and without were malcontents, but the soberer -counsel prevailed. The mate agreed to keep the crew from mutiny, the -moderate-minded adventurers to tame the wilder, more frightened and -impatient spirits.... That very night the calm vanished. - -The calm vanished in a wild uprush of clouds and stir of the elements. -The heat and savour of brass, the stillness of death, the amazing blue -of the sky, the splashed red of sunrise and sunset went away. In their -place came darkness and a roaring wind. At first they went under much -canvas; it was a drunken delight to feel the spray, to see the crowned -woman drink the foam, to hear the whistling and the creaking, to know -motion again. But presently they took in canvas.... Twenty-four hours -after the first hot puff of air, they were being pushed, bare-masted, -as by a giant’s hand over a sea that ran in mountains. The sky was -black-purple, torn by lightnings, the rain fell with a hissing fury, -the wind howled now, howled too loudly! - -As the calm would not break, so now the storm would not break. It -roared and howled and the water curved and broke over the decks of the -Silver Queen. A mast went, the ship listed, there arose a cry. The rain -and lightning and thunder ceased, but never the wind and the furious -sea and the darkened sky. The Silver Queen was beaten from wave to -wave, now smothered in the hollow, now rising dizzily to the moving -summit. The waves combed over her, they struck her as with hammers, -her seamen cried out that there was sprung a leak, it came to be seen -that she might not live. The panic of the calm gave way to that of the -storm. - -And now they cried out wildly that the voyage was cursed, and that God -Almighty who had plagued Israel for Achan’s sin was plaguing them for -that they kept aboard most vile offenders and rebels such as these! -Those that were still for delay kept quarter yet a little longer, but -while the wind somewhat lessened, the leak gained, and panic attacked -them too. The captain lay ill and out of his head, the mate was no -stronger than they who wished clearance made. In a black and wild -morning, the livid sky dragging toward them, the sea running high, they -lowered a boat and placed in it Aderhold and Joan and Humphrey Lantern. -They might, perhaps, have held the last with them, carrying him in -irons to Virginia, but when he found what was toward he cursed them so -horribly that no wizard could have thought of worse imprecations. They -shivered and thrust him into the boat, where he knelt and continued his -raving. “Hush!” said Aderhold. “Let us die quietly.” - -The sailors loosed the small boat and pushed it outward from the Silver -Queen. It fell astern, the black water widened between. The ship, mad -to get on, to put distance between her and the curse, flung out what -sail the tempest would let her carry. It made but a slight pinion, but -yet wing enough to take her from that speck upon the ocean, the boat -she had set adrift.... Not she had set adrift, but Ignorance, Fear and -Superstition, their compound, Cruelty, and their blind Prætorian, Brute -Use of Brute Force. There had been one pale ray of something else. -Master Evans had insisted that there be put in the boat a small cask of -water and a portion of ship’s bread. - -The Silver Queen hurried, hurried over the wild and heaving sea, -beneath a low sky as grey as iron. The many gazing still lost at last -all sight of the open boat. It faded into the moving air, or it was -drawn into the sea, they knew not which. But it was gone, and they made -bold to hope that now God would cease to plague them. - - - - -CHAPTER XXVI - -THE OPEN BOAT - - -THAT day and night they in the open boat merely lived to die. With each -wave of a sea yet in storm Death overhung them, the foam atop gleaming -down like a white skull. The boat rode that wave, and then Death rose -on another. There seemed naught to do in life but to meet Death—a -little candle left to go forth by. Death preoccupied them—it was so -wide and massive, it came against them in such tourney shocks. “Now ... -No!—Then now....” But still the boat lived and the candle burned. When -the dawn broke the waves were seen to be lessening in might. - -That day the sea went down and the sky cleared. Sea and sky turned -a marvel of blue, Indian, wondrous. There was a wind, steadily -and quietly blowing, but it served them not who had no sail. All -around—all around the intense sea spread to the horizon, and no sail -showed and no land. The sun mounted and for all the moving air they -felt its heat which increased. Heat and light—light—light.... - -The cask of water.... They found beside it a small drinking-cup of -horn, and they agreed that each should drink this once filled each -day. It was little, but so they might keep Death at bay so many days. -They also portioned out the ship’s bread. Likewise they watched for a -sail. They were now in seas where ships might be looked for; west and -south must lie the islands held by Spain. Once two sea-birds flew past -them, and that would mean that land was not inconceivably far away. -But they saw no land, and no sail was etched against the sapphire sky. -Loneliness profound, and heat and light.... - -All was done that could be done to preserve life. It remained to live -it.... But poor Humphrey Lantern, whom the other two tried to comfort, -would not be comforted. He sat and bit his nails, full of remorse and -horror, then passed through stages of anger to a melancholy, and thence -to a dull indifference, silence, and abstraction. They could not rouse -him. Aderhold spoke in vain of the Low Countries and the wars, and of -all the good that they owed him, and of how they might yet live to -remember these days not unkindly. Lantern, huddled in the bottom of -the boat, looked at them blankly. His abused body sank more quickly -than did theirs.... He had a knife, and at last one night, when they -had been drifting long days and nights, he struck it into his heart. -The body, swaying against Aderhold, roused him from uneasy sleep. -His exclamation waked Joan; she put out her hand and raised it wet -with blood. A moon so great and shining lit the night that they could -see well enough what had been done. Lantern was dead. They laid him -straight in the bottom of the boat. Aderhold drew out and washed the -knife, and then they sat beside the dead man until the moon paled in -the vast rose-flush of dawn. Then, while sea and sky were so beauteous, -they lifted the body; then, while they looked to the brightening east, -let it leave their hands for the great deep. Wind and current bore the -boat slowly onward and away. The two were now so weak that they lay -still as after great and prolonged exertion. - -The day burned to its height, flamed to its close. There came a sunset -of supernal beauty, and then the pitying, brief twilight and the glory -of the southern night. The coolness gave a little strength. Aderhold -set the cup to the mouth of the cask and poured for each a shallow -draught of water. They should not have drunk till morning, for their -store was nearly gone. But with one mind they took this, to give them -voice, to free them for a little from gross pain. When it was done they -turned each to the other, came each to the other’s arms. - -Another dawn—the furnace of the day—sunset—the night. The wheel went -round and they, bound to it, came again to dawn and then to strong -light and heat. When they had drunk this morning, there remained of -the water but one cupful more. They lay, hand clasping hand, in the -bottom of the boat that now drifted on a waveless sea. Sometimes they -murmured to each other, but for the most part they lay silent. There -was now no outward beauty in the two. They lay withered, scorched, -fleshless, half-naked, human life at last gasp between the ocean and -the sky. Within, all strength and beauty could summon only negatives. -They did not complain, they did not curse, they did not despair, they -did not hate. Within was a stillness as of a desert, with a low wind -of life moving over it. The physical could not lift far into emotion, -but what there was was love and pity. Emotion could hardly attain -to thought, nor thought to intuition, but what there was knew still -the splendour and terror and all things that we are. Day—eve—the -night—the dawn—day. They measured out the last water in the cask and -shared it justly between them. They lay side by side, his hand upon her -breast, her hand upon his. The fierce heat, the fierce sunlight rose -and reigned.... - -A crazy, undecked sailboat came out of the haze. It was returning from -a great island south to a group of small islands lying northerly in -these seas, and it held five or six Indians—not the fiercer, southern -Caribs, but mild Lucayans. One spied a dot upon the waters and pointed -it out. They drew slowly nearer in a light wind, and when they saw -that it was a boat adrift, tacked and came up with it. A man leaned -overboard, seized and drew it in, and with a rope fastened it to the -stern of the larger craft. Uttering exclamations, they examined their -prize. In the bottom of the boat lay a man and a woman in man’s dress. -They lay unconscious, wreathed in each other’s arms, two parched and -gaunt creatures who had suffered the extremity of exposure, hunger, -and thirst. The Indians thought that they were dead, and, indeed, they -looked like death and terrible death. But when they were lifted and -dragged into the larger boat, and when water was put between their -blackened and shrivelled lips, there came a faint stir and a moaning -breath.... The Indians had good store of water in cask and calabash; -they gave it again from time to time, and they crumbled cassava bread -and fed that too.... Joan and Aderhold turned back to the land of the -living. - -At first the Indians thought that they were Spanish, for they had -no association with other white men. Association with the Spaniard -had been cruel enough for them; they belonged to the disappearing -remnant of a people swept by the thousands from their islands to the -larger islands, enslaved, oppressed, extirpated. These in the boat -were runaways from a hard master, who had stolen this boat and put -out, crazy as it was, on what might seem a hopeless voyage. Did they -pass through days and nights, and leagues and leagues of sea and go -uncaptured by some Spanish craft, did they come at last to their own -island, what would they find there? A desert, with, perhaps, a tiny -cluster of palm-thatched huts, still clinging, looking for some landing -party, looking to be swept away as had been their kith and kin—a -perishing group, dejection, languor of life.... But homesickness drove -them on; better a death-bed with freedom than the peopled great island -where they were slaves! They had felt the Spanish lash and the Spanish -irons; they looked doubtfully enough upon the white man and woman, and -it was perhaps a question whether now they would not pay back.... But -when at last Aderhold spoke, it was in English. They did not know that -tongue and they answered in altered and distorted Spanish. He had a -little Spanish, and he made them understand briefly that the two had -been in an English ship and that there had been a storm and that they -were castaways. They were not Spanish, and they did not know the great -island or any of the masters. They were English, whom the Spanish -hated. That fact being weighed, the Indians turned friendly, laughed -and stroked their hands in token of amity, then set apart for the two a -great calabash of water, and gave them more cassava bread. - -Joan and Aderhold ate and drank. The will to live was strong, for life -had turned a rainbow, and a wild and beautiful forest, and a song of -the high and the deep, and an intense pulsation. The two came swiftly -up from Death’s threshold. Before the boat came into sight of land -the light was back in their sunken eyes and some strength in their -frame.... The land seemed a low, island shore. The excited Indians -gesticulated, spoke in their own tongue. Aderhold, questioning them, -learned that it was the outermost of their island group, but not their -own island to which they were bound. They saw pale sand and verdure -green as emerald; then the night came and covered all from sight. No -light of torch or of cooking-fire pierced the darkness. The blank -shores slipped past, the boat left them astern, and now again all -around was the sea.... But though it was night there was no sleeping. -The returning exiles were excited, restless, garrulous. The two learned -that there were many islands and now almost no people. The people—the -Indians beat their breasts—were gone now, almost all gone. For the -masters sent men from the great islands to burn the villages and take -the men and women and children and drive them aboard ships and carry -them off to make poor slaves of them. They had done so when the oldest -men were children, and when the oldest men’s fathers were children. But -now the masters did not come, for the men and women and children were -all gone—all gone but a few, a few. The returned from long slavery did -not know if these few were yet there, yet clinging to their island. - -Night passed, dawn came, the wind blew them on. Now they saw islets and -islands, but no craft upon the water, or sign of life. Then, in the -afternoon, the Indians’ lode-star lifted upon the horizon. They put -their helm for it, a freshening wind filled their sail. Presently they -saw it clear, a low island, here ivory white and here green as emerald. -The Indians shouted and wept. They caressed one another in their own -tongue, they gesticulated, they held out their arms to the nearing -shore. - -The shore dilated. Reefs appeared to be warily avoided, and the water -grew unearthly blue and clear. Green plumes of palm seemed to wave -and beckon. Back from the narrow ivory beach, inland out of a break -in the belt of green, rose a feather of smoke. The Indians when they -saw it were as mad people. They leaped to their feet, they embraced -one another, they laughed, they strained their bodies toward the land, -and broke into a savage chant of home-coming.... Now they were in -a tortuous channel between _cays_ and the island. The island beach -widened, and now human forms appeared—not many, and at first with a -hesitant and fearful air; then, as they became assured that here was -only one small sailboat, with a bolder advance, until at last they came -down to the edge of the small bight to which the boat was heading. They -were Indians like those in the boat, a mild and placable strain, dulled -and weakened by the century-old huge wrong done them. They were but a -handful. In the whole island there was now but one small village. - -The boat glided past a fanged reef and came into a tiny crystal -anchorage where the bright fish played below like coloured birds in the -air. They lowered sail; they came as close as might be to the shelving -land; the Indians leaped into the water and made ashore with loud cries -and incoherent words. The islanders swept about them, surrounded them; -there rose a wild, emotional questioning and greeting, laughing and -crying. - -The infection spread to Joan and Aderhold. Behind them lay pain and -horror, and pain and horror might again claim them. But now Time had -spread for them a mighty reaction. It was so blessed to be alive!—they -were so prepared to embrace and love life—every material thing seemed -so transfused and brightly lit from within—they laughed themselves and -felt in their eyes the happy dew.... They, too, must take to the water -to come ashore. It was naught to them, the shallow bright flood. They -crossed it as had done the Indians, and stepped upon the land. - - - - -CHAPTER XXVII - -THE ISLAND - - -A FEW miles in length, fewer in breadth, the island lay in a sub-tropic -clime. During its winter all the air was neither cold nor hot, but of a -happy in-between and suave perfection. Its summer brought strong heat -and at times wild tempests of rain and wind, thunder and lightning. For -the most part the land rose but a little way above the sea, a shallow -soil with a coral base. Out of this mould sprang a forest of eternal -greenness. Once there had been a number of villages, each in its small -clearing, but one by one they had been destroyed and the clearings had -gone back to the forest. - -This one larger village had outlasted. Dwindling year by year, before -it, at no great term, death and absorption, when all the island would -be desert, it yet showed a number of irregularly placed, circular huts -woven of branch and reed and thatched with palm. To this village Joan -and Aderhold were swept together with the escaped slaves, the returned -exiles. Besides the tenanted huts there were others from which the -last of the occupants had died, but which were not yet fallen to the -earth and become a part of the forest floor. Joan and Aderhold were -given one of these abodes standing under tamarind and palm, and here -food was brought them. All the village was in commotion, restless and -excited, for seldom and most seldom in all the years did any one come -back.... When night fell there ensued feasting and revelry, a strange -picture-dance, performed by men and women, long recitatives wherein -some sonorous voice told of this people’s woes, of their palmy days, -and how the white men came in the time of their fathers, and they took -them for gods and they proved themselves not so—not gods but devils! -The torrent expression of wrongs flowed on. Sharp cries and wailings -came from the dusky figures seated in an ellipse about the narrator. -Eyes looked angrily across to where the white man and woman sat and -watched. - -Among the Indians of the sailboat had been an old man with a finer, -more intelligent face than was to be found among his fellows. It was -he, principally, who had talked with the castaways. Now, on land, he -constituted himself their advocate and protector. He had been, it -seemed, the chief man of a vanished village, and this present village, -being without a strong man, looked to him with deference. Now he rose -and spoke and the threatening looks faded. These Indians were not of a -fierce and cruel temper—and the two strangers were not Spanish, but -came from a tribe whom the Spanish fought.... Danger to the two from -their hosts or captors passed away. - -The night went by in noise and feasting. With the dawn the village sank -into sleep. The home-coming ones needed, after long adventure and -strain, rest and repose, while the friends and kindred at home were -used to swift and calm descendings to immobility and profound sleep. -Within and without the tent-like huts lay the dusky, well-shaped forms, -almost bare, still as death, lying as though they had been shot down by -invisible arrows. The projecting palm thatch, the overhanging, thick -foliage, kept out the fierce sun, made a green and brown gloom. - -Joan and Aderhold slept, too. For them the immediate need was health -again, strength again, energy in which to base the wonderful flower of -life. They lay like children near each other, and slept the livelong -day. When, in the last bright light, they waked, there was cassava -bread, and tropic fruit and water from a neighbouring spring. They ate -and drank and talked a little, about indifferent things—only nothing -now was indifferent, but rich and significant. But it was as though -they would hold away from them for a little while their deeper bliss; -would not speak of that until they could speak in health, with glow -and vigour and beauty and power! About them the village half waked, -half slept. They heard women’s and children’s voices, but dreamily. The -woods, that had been very still during the heat of the day, were now -as murmurous as rapids of a stream. All manner of winged life made a -continuous sound. Joan and Aderhold rested their heads again upon the -woven palm mat and slept the deep night through. - -With the second morning the Indian village resumed its normal process -of existing. The women practised a kind of embryonic agriculture. The -men hunted not at all, though they trapped birds; but they fished, -pushing out into the turquoise sea in canoes hollowed from tree-trunks. -The women plaited baskets, and cut and dried gourds large and small. -They had cotton, and they knew how to weave it into the scant clothing -needed in such a clime. They scraped the cassava root into meal and -made bread, and gathered and brought in the staple fruits. In the -village were to be found in some slight number and variety matters not -of savage make. During the more than a hundred years since the great -Genoese and his Spanish sailors had come upon this group, such things -had drifted here, as it were, upon the tide and the winds. Thus there -were to be seen several cutlasses and daggers, together with a rusted -Andrea Ferrara, a great iron pot, and smaller utensils, a sea-chest, a -broken compass, a Spanish short mantle and hat and feather, some piece -of furnishing from a church, a drinking-cup, a length of iron chain. -But nothing had been left, or had been traded for with Indians of other -villages, for a long, long time. The islands were desert and forgotten -... except that now of late sea-robbers and pirates were, for that -very reason, taking as anchorage, refuges, and bases of operation, the -intricate channels and well-concealed harbours. But no pirate ship had -found as yet this inward-lying island. It rested upon the sea as if -forgotten or lost or inaccessible, and its fading people knew at least -a still and not ungentle autumn. - -The old Indian came this morning to visit Aderhold and Joan. Others had -been before him; they had held, perforce, a kind of levee. The children -were not more curious, nor simpler in their expression of curiosity, -than were the men and women. They had no language in common with the -castaways but that of gesture, but they made this answer. The torn, -sun-faded clothing of the two, the fineness and tint of their hair, -the colour of their skin, Joan’s grey eyes, the absurd sound of their -speech at which the Indians laughed heartily—every physical trait was -of interest. But as with children attention went little further than -that and was quick to flag. The levee dispersed. - -But the old man’s interest went beyond eyes and hair and a fair skin. -He could speak in Spanish, too, and Aderhold could answer. He was as -curious as the others, but his curiosity had a wider mental range. -The strangers’ country and its nature—their rank there—why they -left it—had their ship utterly perished in the hurricane—these and -other questions he asked, with his fine, old, chieftain, shrewd, not -unhumorous face. Aderhold answered with as much frankness as was -possible. The old chief listened, nodded, said briefly that he had -heard men in the great island speak of those other white men, the -English, and how they fought like devils. “But devils’ devil not what -I call devil,” said the chief. “Devils’ god what I call devil.” - -He wished to know if the English were not coming to fight the Spanish, -and his eyes lit up, “Then come rest here. Englishmen wouldn’t stamp -foot upon us—eh?” He observed that the hut was old and falling down. -“Not good place. Too much tree—too much other houses all around. I -like place see the water—night and morning. Sit and think, think where -it ends.” He offered to have them a house built. “Do it in one day. -When you like it you look, say where.” - -Presently he gazed at them thoughtfully, and held up two fingers. -“Sister and brother?” - -“No, not sister and brother. We are lovers.” - -“Ah, ah!” said the old chief. “I thought that, yonder in the -boat.—What is her name—and your name?” - -“Joan—and Gilbert.” - -The old man said them over, twice and thrice, pleased at mastering the -strange sounds. “Joan—Gilbert. Joan—Gilbert.” At last he went away, -but that was the beginning of a long and staunch friendship. - -The day passed, the night. Another day dawned and ran onward to an -afternoon marvellously fair. The season of hurricanes and great heat -was passing; the air was growing temperate, life-giving. This day had -been jewel-clear, with a tonic, blowing wind, strong and warm. The -narrow shore-line of wave-worn rock and coralline sand lay only a -little way from the village. In the latter occurred a continual, sleepy -oscillation of its particles, talk and encounter, and privacy had not -been invented. Joan and Aderhold, fairly as strong now as on that night -when with Gervaise and Lantern they broke prison, went this afternoon -down to the sea. - -It stretched before them, the great matrix from which the life of the -land had broken, the ancient habitat. They left the village behind; -a point of woodland came between them and it. Now there was only the -ocean, the narrow shore, the lift of palms and many another tropic -tree, and the arch of the deep blue sky. The tide was coming in. They -sat upon a ledge of coral rock and watched it. The water, beyond the -foam of the breaking rollers, seemed of an intenser hue than the sky -itself—and calm, calm—with never a sail, never a sail. - -“We may live here and die here—an old man and woman,” said Joan: “die -together.” - -“I am thirty-four years old,” said Aderhold. “I will have to die before -you.” - -“No. I will die a little sooner than I might.” - -“No! I will grow younger—” - -“We talk nonsense,” said Joan. “We sit here, as young and as old each -as the other! And we shall die together.” - -A wave broke at their feet with a hollow sound. It fell on her last -word, and it seemed to repeat it with a sullen depth, _Together_. It -came to both that they were to have died together, there in England, -and that if ever they were retaken, as the great strangeness of -life might permit, then certainly in all probability they would die -together. That was one way in which the granting of their wish might be -taken as assured.... But they saw no sail, and they saw that now the -village never looked for a sail.... Safety might, indeed, have come to -dwell with them. The thought of omen faded out. - -The wind blew around them warm and strong. It was full tide, and about -them foam and pearl, and the voice of mother sea. They sat with clasped -hands on their coral ledge. It was coming back to them—it had come -back to them—health and glow and colour and spring. Joan was fairer -than she had been in Heron’s cottage. First youth, youth of the senses, -youth controlled and well-guided, but youth, revived like the phœnix -in Aderhold the scholar. He had seemed graver and older than he truly -was. In him strength, activity, adventure, interest, will, and daring -had early risen into the realm of the mind. There they had bourgeoned, -pressed on, been light of step and high of heart. But the outward man -had not been able to keep pace. Now a deep passion changed that. He -looked as young as Joan; both looked immortal youth. Each put hands -upon the other’s shoulders, they drew together, they kissed. The voice -of the ocean, and of the wind and of the forest spoke for them, and -their own hearts spoke. - -The next day, when the old chief visited them, they went back to his -proposal of a new house. The idea found him ready as a child. It was -among his traits to be easily fired with the joy of building. He would -speak to the chief men and the young men, and they would tell the women -to do it at once. Where would Joan and Gilbert—he produced the names -with pride—have it built? - -They took him with them and showed him. Just without the village, so -near that they could hear its murmur, yet so far that there was not -oppression, in a rich grove, opening to a bit of sandy shore and a -wide view of the azure sea.... The old chief gazed with appreciation, -nodded, “Good! Go talk to chief men now.” So much a man of his word -was he that the next day saw the women bringing bundles of reeds and -palm leaves for the thatching. Also young trees were cut for the posts. -Aderhold and Joan studied the method, saw how they might extend, add -a shed-like room or two, make a gallery for working under shade. The -old chief and the others, too, from the great island, had ideas. The -village was in a gay, a stimulated mood. It was a gala month—not every -other day, nor any other day, did captive tribesmen come back, or -castaways appear that were not Spanish, human driftwood making human -interest! They built for the two from far away so large and good a -house that they themselves marvelled at it. “Houses like that”—a woman -said to Joan—“in houses like that our fathers live, eating bread with -the Great Spirit!” When the house was done, the village feasted, and -an Indian, rising, addressed the castaways and said that now they were -members and an adopted man and woman of the tribe, and that the village -expected much good from them. “We show you how we do—you show us how -your people do—show us how to kill Spaniards when they come!” - -The next day Joan and Aderhold took possession of their house. When -the crowd who had accompanied them to it was gone, and when the old -chief was gone, and when there came the evening stir and murmur from -the village, the two built their fire, and Joan made cakes of cassava -bread and Aderhold brought water from a little spring that was their -own. They had gold and russet fruit, and they sat and ate before their -own door and were content. It was a bright and lovely evening, with a -light upon the sea and the palm fronds slowly swinging. The voice of -the village came not harshly, but with a certain mellow humming, and -the voice of the sea upon the reef came not harshly either. When the -meal was finished, they covered the embers of their fire so that it -should not go out, then rose from their knees and hand in hand went -the round of their domain. Here they would make a garden, here they -would bring the water to a trough nearer the hut. Back at the doorway -they looked within and saw their house fair and clean, yet fragrant of -the green wood, with store of primitive household matters, with the -sleeping-mats spread. They turned and saw the great sea and the sky -wide and deep. The evening wind, too, had arisen and caressed them, -blowing richly and strongly. A tall palm tree rose from clean white -sand. They sat beneath this while the stars came shining forth, and -that of which they spoke was Love. - - - - -CHAPTER XXVIII - -FOUR YEARS - - -NO Spaniards came to be driven back, had Aderhold been that magician -who could do it. It was like a lost island, or the first peopled -island, or the last. Day after day they watched a tranquil sea and saw -no point of any sail. Time passed. The Indians from the great island -ceased to dream of recapture. Joan and Aderhold ceased to dream of -being taken, wrenched apart; ceased to dream of the open boat and of -the Silver Queen and of the prison and the gallows field. They did not -cease to dream of Hawthorn, of Heron’s Cottage and the Oak Grange, of -Hawthorn Forest, and all the life that lay on yonder side the prison -gates. Joan dreamed of her father and of her uncle the huntsman, of -the castle and Mistress Borrow and others there, the town as once it -had been to her, and of Hawthorn as once it had been. She dreamed of -Heron’s cottage—of every item there—the well under the fruit trees, -the bees under the thatch, the daffodils and every later flower, of -her kitchen and the hearth and the old settle, and her spinning-wheel. -She dreamed of gathering faggots in Hawthorn Forest. She dreamed of -Alison and of Will the smith’s son and of Goodman Cole and of many -another—the vintner in the town, Cecily Lukin and the forester’s -wife, old Master Hardwick—many another. But all were blended together -in a dream world, in a gay and bright picture-book, where if there were -witches they were harmless good souls who rather helped people than -otherwise, and where no one was persecuted for thinking things out -for one’s self. In the picture book it seemed almost a laudable thing -to do. Aderhold dreamed—and his dream world was wider by his greater -range of this life’s experience. He dreamed of Hawthorn and Hawthorn -Forest and all the roads thereabouts, of the Oak Grange and of Heron’s -cottage; but he dreamed likewise of a world beyond Hawthorn. He dreamed -of his own childhood and boyhood, and they, too, had a picture-book -setting, where the rough became only rich and varied, and what had -seemed sorrow and harm turned an unhurt side. He dreamed of his first -manhood, and of his search for knowledge, the sacred hunger and thirst -and the lamp of aspiration in his hand. He dreamed of old woes and -scars, happenings many an one, persons many an one.... But neither he -nor Joan dreamed any more, with a frightful sense of nearness, with a -cold start of waking, of sudden, clutching hands, of separation, of -dark and deep gaols where neither could hear the other’s voice, or -if the other’s voice was heard, indeed, then heard in a long cry of -anguish. Fear spread its dark wings and left them, and took with it -intensity of watchfulness and all the floating motes that made its -court. - -They had now great strength and health, Joan’s renewed, Aderhold’s such -as it had never been. They stood erect and bright-eyed, their movements -had rhythm, the hand went with precision to its task, the glance fell -unerringly, the foot bore them lightly. They bent to life with a smile, -frequently with laughter. If life was always a mighty riddle, if at -times it seemed a vivid disaster, yet indubitably there were stretches, -as now, when it became a splendid possession! - - “‘I have heard talk of bold Robin Hood, - And of brave Little John, - Of Friar Tuck and Will Scarlett, - Locksley and Maid Marian—’” - -sang Joan. She wove as she sang, for there was cotton for weaving, -and she had learned of the Indian women and greatly bettered their -instruction. She saw garments for them both, hanging from the pegs, -lying upon the shelves Aderhold had made. She had traded her skill at -many things for needles of bone, for the vegetable dyes that the women -used, for various matters that she wanted. She was of all women most -fit for such a return to a younger world. Sane and strong and skilled, -with the artist arisen from the mere workwoman, she turned back some -thousand years, and handled savage life with a creative hand. On all -sides latent power came forth. A wise trader, she gathered what she -needed; a good teacher, she imparted knowledge as she went, without -ostentation, insensibly, with a fine unconsciousness; a worker of the -best, she did that which her hand found to do with _élan_ and precision -and an assured result upon which to base further results. She lacked -not for leisure either, nor for a whimsical, sceptical glance upon her -own labours, nor for an ability to let it all slip aside while she sat -and brooded upon the open sea. - -As for Aderhold, he was and was not the man of the Oak Grange. He was -that man freed where he had been bound, fed where he had been starved. - -Their domain grew in fitness and beauty. By the time the perfect -winter had passed into the languors of spring, and spring into the -heats and rains of summer, and summer again into cooler, fairer days, -they had achieved about them an Arcadian right simplicity, as far from -meagreness as from excess. The large hut, palm-thatched, stood in a -well-stocked garden. Great trees gave them shade; a spring of clear -water for ever a cooling, trickling sound. Around all they planted a -flowering hedge. Within this round sounded the hum of their industries -and their own clear voices. Without was the eternal voice of the sea, -and in and out and around, the voice of the moving air. - -The murmur of the Indian village was likewise there, but it did not -come athwart; it travelled equably with the other sounds. They had -come to have a fondness for the dwindling village, an affection for -this remnant of a remnant of a people. They were poor savages, they -had flaws and vices, but save that they were less complex, less -intertwined with later offshoots, more plain stalk and plain word, -their flaws and vices differed in no great wise from those that might -be viewed in France or England. At times the village seemed like a -village of children, and then again it might seem very old and somewhat -wise. Once or twice they had seen it waver toward a village of beasts, -heavily swaying toward the animal only. But Aderhold had seen that -happen in France and Italy—they might both think that they had seen -it happen in England. On the very morrow it was something more than -animal. At times it was something much more—something much higher. And -they knew that flaws and vices lurked in themselves also—unplucked-out -weeds yet living a slow dark life in the backward-reaching abyss. They -understood the village, and they tried to help. They did help, and by -slow degrees the village came to change affection with them. As for the -old chief, every other day he came to see them. - -He was of an enquiring and speculative turn of mind, and it was his -wont to bring unsolved questions to the vine-shaded strip of bare -earth before the hut, and there, seated on a mat with a few followers -squatted around, propound them to the two. To most of the islanders all -things, outside the narrowest range, were supernatural. The old man’s -scope was wider, and the daring of his scepticism, proportioned to his -environment, would have qualified him for a dungeon in most countries -that Aderhold knew.... Here upon this island all was as a sketch, a -faint model and portent only of what, in seventeenth-century Europe, -had become enlarged, filled in and solid. Generically it was the same; -it was but a question of degree of intensity and of accretions. These -Indians also held for an external deity, so extruded, so external that -steps—that intermediaries—must be extruded to cover the extruded -space between, to reach the extruded Ear and Mind. Moreover, they -did not maintain this a flowing process, but continually let the -extrusions of remote ancestors dam the stream. They had idols whom -certainly not even the old chief might with impunity criticize. They -had “Thou shalts” and “Thou shalt nots” which were wise and might long -remain so, and those which had been wise and were now meaningless, -colourless, making neither for much good nor much harm, and those -which might once have been wise but were now hurtful, and those which -never had been wise and grew in folly. They had notions, dim, not as -yet fearfully positive, of a future life of reward or punishment, -where they would do without limit or term—throughout eternity, -indeed—that which, Indians upon this island, they most liked to do -in this present moment, or would suffer, alike for ever, just those -pains which at present they acutely disliked. They placed great merit -in belief without question, obedience without discrimination, and a -prostrate attitude. They had extruded Authority. Nothing had a proper -motion of its own, but everything was moved by something else. The -disclaimer of responsibility, of generic lot and part, was general. The -disinclination to examine premises was supreme. They had found their -despot in Inertia. - -But the old chief was exceptional. He was wary and paid respect to -taboos. That done, he loved to talk. He brought to Aderhold questions -such as, at the dawn of philosophy, an intelligent barbarian might -have put to Thales or Anaximander. Aderhold answered as simply and -well as he might; where he could not answer, said so. Now and then -the more active-minded of the old man’s escort brought queries. Joan -also listened and questioned. Aderhold, answering, taught in terms of -natural science and a general ethic—very simply, for that, here, was -the only way.... - -But when the old chief and his followers had gone away from the -vine-clad porch, and the murmur of the village came faintly across -the evening, when, their day’s labour done, they went down to the -sea, to the coral ledge or crescent of pale sand, and lay there by -the blue, unending water; or when, night having fallen, they rested -in the moonlight on the black-and-white chequered ground beneath the -palms, they spoke more fully, shared more completely the inner worlds. -Love could not rest with them in the physical. Freedom, dilation, -redoubling, rapid and powerful vibration, energy, colour, music, all -mounted from the denser to the rarer universe. Their minds interfused, -there came moments when their spirits might seem one iridescent orb. -They were one, ... only the next instant to be exquisitely different -... then to approach and blend again. At such times they spoke in low -tones, with slow, rounded words, of the deepest waters where their -souls drank of which they had knowledge, or they spoke not at all, -having no need to.... At other times they talked of the past and the -future and the whole round world. Steadily they learned of each other: -Joan much from Aderhold, Aderhold much from Joan. - -They had lived here a year—they had lived here more than a year. When -they had lived here two years, when they, no more than the Indians -about them, watched the horizon for any ship, when they had ceased to -dream of separation, change, and disaster, when it was fully home, with -the sweetness and fragrance of home—then was born their child. - -Joan lay upon the clean, woven mats in the bright moonlight. Aderhold -put the babe in her arms, then stretched himself beside them. Her grey -eyes opened upon him. “Gilbert—Gilbert—I love you so—” - -“I love you so—” - -She took his hand and guided it with hers until it rested upon the -child, wrapped in cloth which she had woven. “Life from life and added -unto life,” she said. “Love from love and added unto love.” - -The child was a woman child, and they named her Hope. She grew and -thrived and they had great joy in her. When the old chief came to see -her, he held her in his hands and gave her a musical name of his own. -They translated it, Bird-with-Wide-Wings. Henceforward now they called -her by this Indian name and now they called her Hope. The old chief -grew fond of her, came oftener than ever, would sit in sun or shade -quite still and content beside the cotton hammock in which she swung. -The days went by, the weeks, the months, and she continued to thrive. -She had Joan’s grey eyes, but save for this she was liker Aderhold. She -lay regarding them, or laughed when they came toward her, or put out a -small hand to touch them; she was happy and well, and they were glad, -glad that she was on earth. - -The hot season came and the rains, and in August heavy storms. Trees -were levelled and the frail huts of the village suffered. The sea came -high upon the land and the rain fell in sheets. In the dim hut with the -door fast closed, Aderhold and Joan and the babe rested in security. -The babe slept; the two lay and listened to the fury without. - -“There comes into my mind,” said Joan, “the black sky and the dead air -and the lightning and thunder that Sunday in Hawthorn Church.” - -“It came to me then, too,” answered Aderhold. “Some finger in this -storm strikes the key.” - -There was a silence. Both saw Hawthorn Church again and the -congregation, and Master Clement in the pulpit. Both felt again the -darkness of that storm, the oppression and the sense of catastrophe. -In mind again each, the remembered bolt having fallen, left the church -and took the homeward road. Joan hurried once more over the sighing -grass, past the swaying trees, saw Heron’s cottage and the breaking -storm. Aderhold passed again through Hawthorn Forest and crossed the -stream before the Oak Grange, reached again the fairy oak and the -Grange. He was again in Dorothy’s kitchen, stooping over the fire—in -his old room with his unfinished book beneath his hand—upon the -stairs—the door was opening—the men to take him.... The blast without -the hut changed key. The babe woke, and Joan, lifting her, moved to and -fro. When she was hushed and sleeping, the strong echo, the returned -emotion had disappeared. They kept silence for a little, and then they -talked, not of old things but of the island, of their trees and garden -and harm from the hurricane that must be repaired, and then of the -village and the children of the village. They were beginning now to -teach these. - -The storm passed and other storms. There came around again the days of -balm, the perfect weather. The child Hope was a year old. Their joy -in her was great, indeed. For themselves, they were husband and wife, -lovers, friends, fellow scholars, fellow workers, playmates. Their -friendship with the Indians was stronger by a year, their service -stronger. The old chief came often and often, and the child crowed and -laughed and clapped her hands to see him. - -The balmy days, the perfect weather passed, and the spring passed. -Summer again with its heats and rains was here. With the first great -storm, in the hut with the door fast closed, shutting out the swaying -and the wind and the hot, rain-filled air, Joan, playing with the -little Hope, keeping her from being terrified by the darkness and the -rush of sound, suddenly fell quite still where she knelt. She turned -her head; her attitude became that of one who was tensely and painfully -listening. - -When she spoke it was with a strange voice. “Does it come again to you -as it did last year?” - -“Yes,” said Aderhold; “it comes by force of association. Dismiss it -from your mind.” - -“It comes as close as though it were going to be real again.” - -“It is the darkness and oppression and the feeling of being pent. It -will pass.—Look at the Bird-with-Wide-Wings! She is laughing at us.” - -The hurricane raved itself to a close; the light came and the blue sky, -the sun shone out. There followed a week of this; then, one morning at -sunrise, Joan, coming out of the hut into the space beneath the trees, -looked seaward and uttered a cry. “Gilbert—Gilbert!” - -Aderhold came to her side. “What is it?” - -Her arm was raised and extended, the hand pointing. A ship stood off -the island. - -All that day it was there; it hovered, as it were, it reconnoitred. -It sent out no boats, but there was something that said that it had -seen the village. It came near enough, and the clearing would be -visible from the rigging. The Indians’ canoes, moreover, were there -upon the beach.... It was a ship with dingy sails, with a bravo air, -yet furtive, too. Once it clapped on sail and dwindled to a flake, and -those who watched from out a screening belt of wood thought that it was -gone. But it seemed that it meant only to sail around the island, for -presently the outlook in the tallest tree saw its shape, having doubled -a long point, enlarge again across this green and silver spit. When the -second morning dawned, there it was again, dusky, ill-omened, riding -the deep water beyond the reef that somewhat guarded the shore.... Then -the air thickened, and there threatened a hurricane. The ship turned -and scudded away. While the sky darkened, she vanished, sinking beneath -the horizon to the south. - -The storm broke, reigned and passed. When it was over, when, save for -the myriad small wreckage and the whitened and high-running sea, there -was calm again, then fell talk and discussion enough as to that ship, -foreboding enough, excitement enough in the village. The Indians made -new spears or tried trusted old ones, sharpening afresh every point. -They had bows and arrows, though they put more dependence in their -spears, and in short hatchets, headed with bits of sharpened rock. -Whatever weapons there were were got in order. That done, all that they -could do was done. Their not unhealthful clime, their search for food, -their fishing, swimming, their games and ceremonial dances kept their -bodies, slight and not greatly muscular though they were, yet in a -condition of some strength and readiness. Now they had only to wait.... -They waited, but no ship came back, nor other ships appeared. - -The bad season passed, the good days came around again, and still no -fleck of a sail showed on all the round of the blue ocean. The Indians -ceased to glance up continually from whatever employment they were -about. Now they looked not once a day, now they ceased all active -expectation, now the matter grew dim, remote, now it faded almost from -mind. The old chief, perhaps, still looked seaward, but the village at -large had short memories when immediate anxieties were lifted. Life -took up again the old, smooth measure. - -But Aderhold and Joan could not forget. Subtly they felt that the -current was wearing another channel. There were cloud shapes below the -horizon. They were happy. Their joy in each other and in the child was, -if that could be, deeper—the very shape of fear gave an intensity, a -lambent rose and purple, a richer music—made it deeper. Their service -to the folk among whom they had fallen was no less.... But they felt a -threat and a haunting and a movement of life from one house to another. - -At last, on a calm and glorious morning, they saw the ship again—that -ship and another. The two lowered sail, down rattled the anchors; they -swung at ease in the still water beyond the fringing reef. Their flags -were Spanish; they sent a shot from a culverin shrieking across to -the land. It sheared the top of a palm tree; the green panache came -tumbling to the ground. Birds rose with clamour and fled away; the shot -echoed from a low hill back in the island. Forth from the ships’ sides -put boats—boat after boat until there were a number—and all filled -with armed men. - - - - -CHAPTER XXIX - -THE SPANIARDS - - -THE slave-seekers, one hundred and fifty armed men, struck a flag into -the earth before the village and demanded a parley. Their leader or -captain was a tall, black-bearded person, fierce and fell of voice and -aspect. He came to the front and shouted to the Indians in a mixture -of Spanish and Indian words. Also he made friendly-seeming gestures. -“No harm meant—no harm meant! Friends—friends! Your kindred send you -messages—from a happy country—much happier than here where you live! -Let us come into your village and talk.—We have beads and scarlet -cloth—” - -But the village kept silence. At Aderhold’s instigation, immediately -after the ship’s first visit, it had digged around itself a shallow -ditch and planted in part a stockade of sharpened stakes, in part a -tall and thorny hedge. Within this manner of wall were gathered some -four hundred souls, counting men, women, and children. Besides the -infants and the small boys and girls there were the old and infirm and -the sick. All were naked of other defence than this one barrier and -the frail, booth-like walls of their huts. They were armed only with -primitive weapons. The word “Spaniard” meant to them ogre and giant. - -If they were not truly ogres and giants, the slave-seekers were yet -active, hardened, picked men, trained in cruelty, practised in wiles, -fired with lust of the golden price. When the village held silent, the -leader tried again with blandishments; when there came no answer but -the hot sunshine and the murmur of wood and sea, the company lifted its -flag and advanced with deliberation. From behind the wall came a flight -of spears and arrows. A Spaniard staggered and fell. Some savage arm, -more sinewy than most, had sent a spear full through his neck. There -arose a roar of anger. The men from the ships, the black-bearded one -at their head, rushed forward, came tilt against the stockade and the -thorn hedge.... They had not believed in the stoutness of any defence, -nor of these Indians’ hearts. But driven back, they must believe. -Carrying with them their wounded, they withdrew halfway to the sea and -held council. - -In the village they mended the gaps in the wall of stakes and thorny -growth, and that done, watched and waited. The sun rode high, the -children went to sleep.... The old chief—the fighting men, the women -gathered around him—talked with high, ironic passion of days gone by -in this island, in this island group. “They came, and our fathers’ -fathers thought they were gods or men like gods! They had their wooden -cross, and they planted it in the sand, side by side with their flag -that says ‘Slay!’ They said that both were pleasing to the Great -Spirit, and that they were his favoured children. They went away and -our fathers’ fathers thought of them as gods and their country as the -house of the Great Spirit.... They who had been children when they came -grew to be men. There were men and men, then, in this land, men and -men! Then the Spaniards came again. They told our fathers that they -came from heavenly shores. They said that there, would our fathers -only go with them in their many ships, they would find their dead -again! Find them living and bright and always young. Find them they -loved. Find their forefathers whom the Great Spirit loved and kept -always about him. Find all they dreamed about. Find happiness.... They -were weak of mind and they believed! They went into the Spaniards’ -ships—hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. Next year the Spaniards came -again and they brought what they said were messages from the red men -who had gone last year to the heavenly shores. It was truly where the -Great Spirit dwelt and where the dead lived again and all the red men -who could should come.... And they whose islands these were were weak -in judgment and listened and believed and went. The Spaniards carried -them away in their ships—men and men and men and women and children. -They loaded their ships with them as though they were nuts or fruit or -fish they had caught, or the gold that they are always seeking. They -carried them away, and next year they came for more. They took these -too. And now this country was growing as it is to-day—trees where once -there were people. But at last one escaped from the ‘heavenly shores,’ -and after long toil and suffering reached these islands and told the -truth. So at last when the Spaniards came the people fought them. But -they were strong and the people were weak. And more and more trees grew -where once there had been men! Now”—said the old chief—“I will tell -you about those heavenly shores, for I, too, have been there. I will -tell you of what we from this country do there, and what is done to -us.” He told, circumstantially, a tale of fearful suffering. - -Many of the Indians, men and women alike, determined to die rather -than be taken. But many, and perhaps the most, were neither strong -nor stoic, and there was a doubt, Aderhold and Joan felt, and the old -chief felt.... Neither that day nor that night did there befall another -attack. The Spaniards camped upon the shore, but the watching village -saw boats go to and fro between the land and the ships. The night was -dark and they saw moving lanterns. With the dawn one of the ships -slowly felt her way farther into the crooked channel; when she anchored -again she lay much nearer than before, and her row of culverins grinned -against the village. Moreover, three lesser pieces had been dismounted -and brought ashore. In the night-time they had made a platform and -mounted these falcons or sakers. - -As the sun rushed up, they sent a broadside against the wall and the -huts beyond. The flame and thunder terrified, the iron shot wrought -havoc. They sent another round, tore a great gap in the hedge, then -with a shout charged, the whole company, across the open strip.... The -bravest of the village fought desperately, but the breach was made. -Many of the assailants were partly mailed. The Indians’ weapons turned -against steel headpieces and backs and breasts. The Spaniards’ pikes -and cutlasses had advantage; their strength and ruthless practice had -advantage; their name, their face, their voice carried terror to these -forest people. Yet they fought, the braver sort striking twice—for -themselves and for those whose joints were as water. The old chief grew -young again. His eyes breathed fire; he fought and he cried his people -on with a great, chanting voice.... A turn in the confused struggle -brought the black-bearded Spaniard facing Aderhold and Joan. “Mother of -God! What’s here? White skins leading these devils and fighting against -us? Flay you alive—” - -Men drove between. There was a great noise, a panting heat, a rocking -and swimming of all things before the eyes. A crying arose. Unlooked -for, suddenly, there had been sent ashore from the ships the final -numbers of their crew and company. Thirty fresh assailants poured with -shouts and lifted weapons through the broken defences.... The fearful -among the Indians, and those who thought slavery better than death, -threw down whatever weapons they bore and made gestures of submission -and entreaty. Others were overpowered. There were many who could not -fight—the sick, the infirm, and aged, many children. The terror of -these and their wailings weakened the hearts of those who did fight. -Moreover, the Spaniards knew what to do. They took a child and threw -it from pike point to pike point, and found Indian words in which to -threaten a like fate to every babe. The Indian mothers cried out to -fight no more. - -The slave-seekers came in mass against those who yet struggled. They -cut down the old chief, fighting grimly; they ran him through the body -with a pike and slew him. Aderhold and Joan with others, men and women, -fought before a hut in which had been placed a number of children. A -Spaniard came behind Aderhold and struck him down with a blow upon the -head. He lay for a minute stunned; when his senses cleared all was -over. All were beaten down, cowed, disarmed. Hands would have seized -Joan. She fought them off, sprang into the hut and caught up her child, -then, with her in her arms, came back to Aderhold’s side.... - -The victors were accustomed to victory. The fighting over, the business -conducted itself according to custom. This affair differed only -from many others in that there had been a resistance of unexpected -firmness. Victory had not been without hurt, without, even, the loss -of Spanish lives. Business, reacting, conducted itself therefore with -something less of contemptuous and careless disregard of pain inflicted -and something more of vindictive willingness to inflict it. The -conquered were driven together and stripped of every belonging which, -by any ingenuity, might be converted into a weapon either against their -masters or their own now wretched lives. The black-bearded captain -told off guards, and beside pike and cutlass the lash appeared.... -The ships were to be furnished fruit and cassava cakes and the casks -filled with water. The already slaves were set to the task. Graves -must be dug for the Spanish dead, and these the slaves dug. Their -own dead went unburied. The black-bearded man walked in front of the -rows of captives and with a jerk of his thumb indicated the too badly -wounded, the sick who would not survive the voyage, the too old. These -they put away with sword or dagger or pike thrust. The children were -to go—healthy children had value. At last he came to Aderhold and -Joan. He stood still before them, looked them up and down, his beard -bristling. “Spanish?” he said. “No, no! I think not!—English, then? -English—English—English! How did you come here?” - -“Through shipwreck.” - -“You taught them to fight us. English—English—English! Well, we shall -see, English!—Are you heretics?” - -“If you mean are we of the English Church, we are not of the English -Church.” - -“English have no church. There is only one church and religion. Are you -of the Holy Catholic Church and Religion?” - -“No.” - -“Then,” said the black-bearded man and spat toward them, “I will take -you as a present to those who are.” - -He stood off and regarded them. Joan with the child sat on the earth, -in the hot sunlight. The child’s terrified crying had hushed; in her -mother’s arms she had sobbed herself to sleep. She lay half covered -by Joan’s skirt, shadowed by her mother’s bending breast and face. -The Spaniard’s countenance twisted until it was like a gargoyle’s for -cruelty and ungenial mirth. Without a word he stooped and with one -great slashing stroke of his dagger slew the child.... - -They bound Joan, and she lay at last, prostrate upon the earth, her -forehead touching the child’s still feet. Aderhold sat beside the dead -and the living love.... Around was heat and glare, huge suffering, -brute indifference, brute triumph, life brought low, life iron-shod -trampling life, a battlefield of instincts, a welter of emotions, -tendencies in impact, old and deep ideas opposed to ideas ... and all -with which he and Joan were ranged in time and space,—their stream and -current—here and now, as often before and often to come, the loser, -the loser drowning in defeat.... He felt the wide cold, the check, the -bitter diminishing, felt it impersonally for the enormous current, the -stream where there were so many drops; then, because he was man, felt -it for this childish people, felt it, a bitter and overwhelming tide, -for himself and Joan. Woe—woe—there was so much woe in living.... - -All the rest of that day the enslaved brought food and rolled casks of -water for the ships. When night came they were let to sleep, lying on -the ground, in a herd. Now and again through the darkness rose a sharp -cry of grief, or ran from one to another a sobbing and groaning. But -the most slept heavily, without movement. Dawn came, and the slaves -were roused. They were permitted to eat a little food—and then they -were driven to the shore and into the boats.... Their dead, their -village, their island were severed from them. They were left naked to -the beating of new tides.... - -Joan and Aderhold were put upon the ship with the darker sails—the -ship that had come first to the island. The hold of this ship was -inexpressibly, fearfully crowded with the enslaved. When the hatches -were closed, it was a black pit, a place of gasping, fighting for -breath. When morning came the Spaniards, seeing that otherwise much -of their property would die and become no man’s property, drew out -several score and penned them in a narrow space upon the deck. Aderhold -and Joan were brought forth with the others, driven here with them, -pressed by the mass close against the ship’s side. - -Day crept away, sunset came. The island where they had dwelled was long -fallen from sight. Out of the sea before them, though as yet at some -distance, rose the shape of an outermost islet of this group. When that -should be passed, there would lie an expanse of ocean, and, at last, -driving south, would rise the great island to which they were bound. -The sun dipped below the horizon, but over against it rose the round -and silver moon. By its light could be seen the strengthening outline -of the last island, at length the very curve of surf, the beach and -sombre palms. - -Aderhold moved, touched Joan who sat as if in a trance. About them -many of the Indians had fallen asleep or lay, beaten down to a -half-consciousness. At no great distance were the guards. But these -had no fear now of that cowed shipload, and so paid little attention. -Amidships and forward were Spaniards enough, but these talked and swore -or gamed among themselves or gazed at the island without lights by -which they were slipping. Aderhold bent and whispered in Joan’s ear. -For a moment she sat motionless; then slowly the mind returned and -became active, though through dark veils of woe. - -She nodded. “Yes, yes! Let us go! If we die we may find her.” - -“Wait until that cloud is between us and the moon.” - -It came between and the ship and the decks darkened. The two rose with -caution to their feet. About them were darkness, shadowy forms, blended -sounds, but no eye seemed to see what they were about, no voice cried -out an alarm. They were close to the ship’s side—one other moment and -they had swung themselves up, leaped overboard.... They touched the -dark water, went under, rose, struck out. In their ears rang no shout -or sound of discovery. The sucking and turmoil of the water about them -lessened. A fresh wind was blowing and the ship sailed swiftly. She was -no longer huge above them, they came out of her shadow; she was seen at -a slight distance, then at a greater and a greater.... They were free -of her, free also of her consort, the other ship. The wide ocean swept -around. - -It swept around save where the island rose. It rose not at all far -away, a quiet and lonely strand. A light surf broke upon its shore. -Sometimes floating, sometimes swimming, the two who would yet have life -gained toward it. They gained toward it until at last they reached it, -came out of the beating surf, and lay with closed eyes and fluttering -breath upon the moonlight-coloured sand. - - - - -CHAPTER XXX - -THE ISLET - - -THIS was a small island or cay. They found water and they found fruit -and cassava, and with these and a shelter of boughs and leaves of the -little palm they raised again the flag of life.... - -The death of the child. For a time that made of existence a cruel -buffet, a sore bruise. The parents grieved. But time dealt with that -grief—time and inner strength. At length it diffused itself, adding -its own hue to many-tinted consciousness, its own strain to life’s vast -orchestration, but no longer darkening and making to throb all moments -of the waking day. They had within them a coördinating, harmonizing -power, and sorrow brought its own wealth and added to the whole. - -The outward activities of life narrowed, indeed, upon this islet. But -here also they took circumstance and enlarged its bounds and deepened -its meaning. They brought will and intellect to bear upon environment, -moulded it as far as might be and increased their havings. Here nor -nowhere in this universe could they be less than interested. Flotsam -upon this islet, yet here as elsewhere the mind found food and field of -action and through small doorways passed into wide countries. - -Love burned clear, love of man and woman. It kept its heyday. But -beside it rose, higher and more massive than in the peopled, busy -island, other ranges of the mind. The child’s death—and the loss -of the Indian village and of the old chief and the recurring vision -of that oppression and the inhumanity of their kind—and the deep -loneliness of this place—all wrought upon them. Moreover, the spring -of inward growth was strong and constant. Year by year, with Joan as -with Aderhold, the spirit travelled further in all its dimensions. - -The mind.... Here upon this span of earth the old ache for knowledge, -the old brooding and longing of the mind came back to Aderhold, came -more imperiously, larger, wider-robed. This ball of earth and the -criss-cross of movement upon it. This sun and the chain that held -to it the ball of earth. What was the chain? These stars and clouds -of stars—this sea of ether—light in waves.... Again, the growth -of plants—motion fluent as a stream. And the life that dwelt in -shells—that made its armour and outgrew it.... Ceaseless change, -transition,—kinds linked by likeness to other kinds, kinds growing out -of other kinds, the trunk branching. He thought that all kinds might -have branched from one or few, and the selfsame sap in all. He did -not believe in a myriad unconnected, arbitrary creations.... But if -the least leaf and tendril knew motion, alteration, growth, then the -sap, too, knew it—the sap that was supposed to be so moveless, so -perfected.... Kin and kin again—one and one again. - -As for Joan—her mind trod differing roads, though with many a point of -contact, many an inn where she met him who travelled too. As of Heron’s -cottage her hands and head had wrought a bright pastoral, an unfrayed -and well-woven garment of life—as in the peopled island she had with a -larger and a freer play, with a more creative and a nobler touch, made -life not an idyll only, but an idyll and something more, so here she -lived a nobler poem. Her child’s death brought into it deeper tones, as -of an organ, as of violins. And as she had lit torches for Aderhold, so -had he lit torches for her. She thought and imaged with a wider sweep -than had once been possible. She thought and imaged now for the whole -world; she dreamed light for all. - -To both the time upon this isle was a time of deepening vision, -of a crescent sense of inward freedom and power. To a stranger’s -chance-lighting eye they would have seemed but two castaways, narrowly -environed, scantly living, lonely and lost, of necessity wretched. They -were not wretched, or lonely, or lost. - -Months passed—the year—a great part of another year. Then one day -again they saw a sail.... It was the beginning of the stormy season, -and there had been rough weather. To-day the sky was blue, the air -but gently moving, but there had been a gale to drive ships and make -wrecks. This ship had not been greatly hurt, but the winds had driven -her out of her course. Moreover, there had been leakage among her -water-casks. It was with joy that she saw this islet lift upon the -horizon. She made it, found a large-enough harbour, between two horns -of coral rock and sand, and presently sent her longboat, filled with -seamen, to the shore. They rowed in cautiously, keeping a good lookout, -for, while it was but an islet and looked desert, there might be -Indians or pirates or Spaniards. No harm showing, they made a landing -and came upon the shore.—It was now to search for water. - -In the search they found a palm-thatched hut, and, standing expectant -before it, a white man and woman.—“Who be you?” demanded the boatswain -in good Devon. - -The ship was the Eagle, sailing home from Virginia, having brought -out colonists and supplies. Now it was taking home samples of native -products, two or three Indians for show, and not a few dissatisfied -adventurers, with others of a stouter make who were bound with -representations to the Company or upon various upgathering missions.... -Who were the white man and woman? They were Giles and Ellice Heme, -shipwrecked here several years ago. The captain, who presently came -ashore, was questioning them. From London? Aye, then! and their ship? -The Needs Must, sailing from port of London. The captain rubbed his -brows. He did not remember the ship or the loss of her, but then more -and more ships were going out, and he could not remember all names or -accidents. All lost? Giles and Ellice Heme could not tell. They had -escaped in a small boat. Those with them had died.—Would they be taken -back to England?—The captain was a bluff old sea-dog, literal-minded -and not inquisitive. He assumed that their tale was true in the main, -and he assumed that, of course, they wished to be taken back to -England. Otherwise, there would be something wrong with them. He hardly -waited for an answer, but turned eyes and mind toward the water-casks. -He was in haste; he wished to up sail and away while the sky was still -without clouds. - -The two, left alone at last after all exclamation and question, faced -a decision—how momentous an one made itself felt between them. They -stood in the brown light of their hut, the doorway framing blue sea and -sky and the Eagle, quivering to be gone. - -Aderhold spoke. “If we refused to go, it is most likely—it is certain, -I think—that they would force us with them. We should be thought -mad—or if not that, they would hold that we were not simply castaways. -They would take us still, and from the first we should rest under -suspicion.” - -“At any time the Spaniards may come again,” said Joan; “then again -horror ... death. Or some other harm may come to one of us here—and -the other left alone. That is often in my mind, and I know that it is -often in yours.” - -“If we reached England unsuspected—if we could lose ourselves in -London—” - -“Never could we go back to Hawthorn—nor to the town!” - -“No.” - -“Six years.... Gilbert, would we not be safe anywhere else?” - -“Ours are matters in which no one is safe who thinks not as his -neighbours. And say we slipped silent and down-bent through life, -giving no present authority offence—yet at some corner comes one who -recognizes face or voice and recalls the past—’Ha, you hide!’ And it -is all to do again.... I do not think we have any choice. I do not -think this captain will leave us here.... There have been men who, -under feigned names and away from the place of blackest threatening, -have lived long and peacefully.... At first, until we were free of -enquiries and had found work by which we might live, there would be -thick danger.... We might escape.” - -“It is best to be with your kind.” - -“Yes, it is best. The world grows so.” - -“Oh, to see green grass and English flowers!... But the child—the -child! We would go farther and farther from where the child lies.... I -know that we must go.” - -“Yes. She does not lie there. She does not stay there.” - -“No—she is here—she is everywhere.... Well, let us go bravely.” - -Giles and Ellice Herne went aboard the Eagle. Before sunset she had -clapped on all sail and was moving swiftly from that island. It faded, -faded. They lost the clump of palm trees marking the place of their -hut, lost the outline of the tiny harbour, lost in the dusk the gleam -of the beach and the white crests of the incoming tide. The Eagle was a -good ship and a swift sailer. Back she came into her course. The bird -that was her figurehead looked east, looked north, between it and its -homing the grey and rolling Atlantic. Now she had bad weather and now -she had good, but the good predominated. - -The ship was not crowded, as had been, six years before, the Silver -Queen. Moreover, those aboard were preoccupied, the dissatisfied -with their dissatisfaction, the hardier, more patient or farseeing -sort, returning to England only to return thence to their new -world, with their papers of representation, their arguments, and -busy schemes. At first there was curiosity as to the castaways and -how they had preserved life, alone, on that morsel of land. That -satisfied, attention turned in each on board to his own matters, or to -matters that seemed cognate. The rescued were quiet folk who kept to -themselves; doubtless they were dazed by long privation and loneliness, -and by this unexpected salvation.... - -Aboard were several women, the captain’s wife, and one or two others -of the bolder sort who would go with their husbands to whatever new -worlds might be discovered. These helped Joan to fitter clothing than -any she possessed. She came back to Aderhold in a linsey kirtle and -bodice, a small white cap, and with a kerchief folded across her bosom. -“Hawthorn again,” she said with a sob in her throat. He, too, had been -given clothing. He was dressed plainly, like a clerk. No one was by, -the soft dusk closing in. They stood for a moment and within them rose -the vivid shape of the past. They smelled again the fern and mould of -Hawthorn Forest; they heard again the drone of the bees, the singing -of the stream past the fairy oak; they heard again the distant church -bells. Rose the great image, grave and golden, of the six years past, -rose the vision of the child, rose old memories, tendernesses, fears, -rose forebodings, prophecies, realizations. It was dusk, the wind -making a low, sustained music. They came to each other’s arms, they -embraced closely, straining each to each with passion. They kissed, the -tears stood in the eyes, fell upon the cheeks of each. It was like a -farewell, and it was like a meeting.... - -Upon the ship was a man neither young nor old, who had come out to -Virginia the year before, sent by the Company upon some investigation. -Now, the work done, he was returning. He had a strong, determined face, -steady eyes and a close-shutting mouth. On the day of their coming -aboard, he with others had approached Giles and Ellice Herne and asked -them questions. They had been true questions; he was interested in -knowing how they got upon that island, but preferred the detail of how -they had managed to live while there. After that, with some frequency -he sought them out and fell into talk. The rest upon the ship were -preoccupied with the struggles and miseries and triumphs of the Colony. -To them it was growing to be home. But the Company’s agent, his errand -done, was returning to England like Antæus to Mother Earth. He must -talk, and guided by some subtle principle of choice, he talked to these -people who also must be homesick for England. - -The two strove to be guarded, spoke little themselves, passed well -enough for a quiet clerk or scrivener or teacher and his wife whom -the whimsical fortunes of the time had made colonists, and wind and -wave and ill chance castaways on that islet. Wisdom made them not -too silent, not to seem morosely so—nor too guarded, not to make it -evident that they were watching from behind barricades. It was chiefly -to Aderhold that he talked, Joan sitting by, her hands clasped in her -lap, her eyes upon the sea, narrowing between them and England. He -talked, it seemed to Aderhold, with boldness, but then the castaway -gathered that upon the issues that interested this man, men in England, -in six years’ time, had grown bolder. - -News from England! News of England when the agent left England last -year was the already two-years-old news that the king meant to rule -without Parliaments. Perhaps when they landed in London they might find -newer news—perhaps the king, wanting money very badly, had wanted -it enough at last to summon a Parliament. If that were so, the agent -of the Company hoped that certain men had seats. He mentioned among -others John Pym. News! There was the news that the Bishops were in the -saddle. Episcopacy had been established in Scotland. Timid and recreant -ministers had gone over, the patriotic were in hiding,—proscribed. The -people were at the mercy of the wolves—the Crown’s wolves. In England -just as bad—though with a difference. The Established Church rode high -and kissed the hand of the king. “Passive obedience!” It had got its -shibboleth. “No power in the people and disordered multitude.”—God’s -own hand having touched the forehead of kings! “Did I not tell ye?” -says the king; and with one hand puts down the civil courts and with -the other lifts the ecclesiastical. - -News! The news from England was Despotism that barked like Cerberus out -of three mouths—King, Bishops, and Favourites! The agent’s face turned -red and the veins in his forehead stood out, so in earnest and angry -was he. “News of England!” he said, “is that slaves will be slaves and -free men will be free men! News of England is that if things better not -there will be battles!” He swung round upon Aderhold. “I speak more -plainly than I should! But if I can read men, your passion, too, is -for freedom!” - -“Aye,” said Aderhold, “I would be free.” - -Another time, when for some minutes they had been watching the sea in -silence, the determined-faced man spoke with sudden energy. “Do you -not hold that the Presbyterian or Calvinist form of religion and the -rule of the people—such as are landowners and tend neither to Popery -on the one hand nor to any manner of disbelief on the other—through -Parliaments duly chosen is the way of God upon earth?” - -Aderhold kept silence, his eyes upon the moving sea. When he spoke at -last it was almost dreamily. “The only way?... Do you?” - -Something in the fast-flowing field, the field that was but the surface -of depth, or in the mist-veiled sky, or in the tone of the castaway, -checked the other’s reply. At last he said slowly, “It is right to -resist a king who would rule us beyond what the sense of man allows.” - -“Yes,” said Aderhold, “that is right.” - -“That is what I care for,” said the agent; “that is the way of God to -me. The bishops go with the king and preach tyranny, so the bishops are -to be fought too. He who wishes to be free surely will not chain his -will to the Pope’s throne. So what is there left but Calvin—if you -exclude these mad Independents who spring up like mushrooms! At any -rate, in England to-day the men who oppose the king’s tyranny are like -to smack of Edinburgh or Geneva!” - -“In a manner I believe that to be true,” said Aderhold. “Not yet do -they wish freedom around and around. But never will I deny that it is -much to begin to image freedom!” - -The ship sailed on through good and bad weather. To the two castaways -danger seemed to sleep. No one troubled them on this ship, preoccupied -with its own affairs. The fact that they were seen with the agent of -the Company procured for them a certain respect. The days slipped by, -the weeks slipped by—pearl-grey weeks, quiet, halcyon. - -There came a summer eve when, hand in hand, Joan and Aderhold watched -England rise from out the sea. None was by. They stood long in silence; -then, “Do you remember,” said Joan in a low voice, “how we ran through -the castle wood with the great moon on high? How we lay in that pit -with the branches over us while they that hunted us went by? Do you -remember the woman with the three daughters who gave us bread and milk?” - -“I remember it all,” said Aderhold. “May we come forth now as then!... -The smell of the hay there in the barn where we lay all day.... The -white road that first night from the prison and the starry sky over the -gallows tree.” - -“Over the gallows tree!” - -“Once I thought a thing like that the fearfullest thing! Now, though I -love life more now than I did then, I do not think so. The old terrors -grow smaller. They will come one day, I think, to cause laughter.” - -“I understand that,” said Joan. “Nor do they matter to me as they did. -Neither the gallows tree, nor words like witch and sorcerer, heretic -and atheist!” - -The shore before them grew in distinctness, grew and grew as they stood -there alone, withdrawn, watching. With that increasing definiteness, -that rigour of line and hue and shape, came with a growing form, a -growing sharpness of menace, came as it had not come to them before -upon this ship, a realizing knowledge that here there was no change; -that the hot ploughshares and the sharp swords were yet ready laid -for folk like them to move across! England was England still.... They -heard upon the wind, “_Witch and Sorcerer—Witch and Sorcerer—doubly -damned for that you were judged and lay not still under our judgement! -Witch and Sorcerer.... Fornicators—for in what church were read -your marriage banns, and what priest with lifted hands blessed your -union?... Blasphemers, deniers, atheists who pray not to Jehovah! Witch -and Sorcerer—Witch and Sorcerer_—” - -They were not wholly free from fear and shrinking. They looked at each -other with whitened faces. But they had said true when they had said -that they were freer. They recovered, they smiled into each other’s -eyes. “I wonder how much of us they will hang or burn—” - -The shores grew plainer, higher. There came, suddenly, a summons to -the captain. They found him in the great cabin, papers upon the table. -Still short of speech, incurious and literal, he now had duties which -he would perform. He had to give account to the proper officers of -the Eagle’s voyage and of those whom she brought into England, and he -proposed not to lose sight of the castaways, Giles and Ellice Herne, -until the right authorities gave him quittance. He could not remember -the Needs Must, but there were many who would. Any saved from any lost -ship had an importance, for they could give to her owners information -where had been guessing. Therefore the captain meant to send the two -ashore with a trusted man who would take them before such and such -persons in authority. There they would be questioned, and if they -answered to satisfaction would doubtless be helped. The captain, with a -wave of his hand dismissing them, turned to other business. He left a -sharp enough thorn of anxiety with the two who had fled England on the -Silver Queen. - -Night passed. Morning broke—English summer, soft and sweet. Here -was the Thames mouth, here other winged ships and ships at anchor, -here the green shores, the waving trees, the clustered houses, here -England—England! - -As they stood watching with full hearts the agent of the Company came -to them from the poop deck. “You have no money?” - -“No.” - -“Have you friends in London?” - -“No.” - -He held out to Aderhold a woolen purse, open, showing two gold nobles -and some silver pieces. “Yes, take it—and no need for thanks! I have -gotten good from you.—You will want work?” - -“Yes.” - -“I have weight enough with the Company to get you a clerkship.” - -Aderhold thanked him again, and with warmth of feeling, but shook his -head. He had plans, he said.—But when the agent was gone the two -smiled at each other. Gold and plans!... They had had plans—they had -planned. What they had planned was to lose themselves, immediately upon -leaving the ship, in the crowd which doubtless would gather at the -waterside, then to slip into some street or lane and begone. Somewhere -in the tangled heart of London, in some poor street, in some garret, -they might find a lodging. Then work to live by.... There had risen a -vision, not unhomely, comforting, hopeful—physician’s work among the -poor and obscure, sempstress or spinster’s work, quiet life in the -shadow but with gleams of sun.... But now the plans seemed hardly even -gossamer. - -The Eagle came slowly into port. Aboard was bustle and confusion. With -the rattling down of her anchor appeared the small boats, the wherries, -clamouring to take all ashore. A barge brought port officers. These -came up the side.... All was well, all might go ashore. The agent of -the Company would go, it seemed, in the port barge. Giles and Ellice -Herne watched him leave the ship. He had been a friend; they felt -gratitude and liking; they watched the dwindling boat and thought it -doubtful if, in this round of life, they would ever see the agent -again.... - -Their time came—they were to go with the second mate, a -broad-shouldered, surly, watchful man. - -The catch into which they stepped was crowded with the lesser sort of -the Eagle’s passengers. Here were the dissatisfied, returning folk, -and here with their exploiter were the Indians brought for show. -Aderhold, looking at them, had a fleeting thought of a booth, paused -before on a morning when he had set out northward from London, years -ago.... Shipping loomed about them, Thames side before them. The -high, narrow houses, the roofs, the windows, the roaring streets, -the throng about the water steps, pushing and jostling for a sight -of the disembarking—talking and shouting, people greeting and being -greeted, a swarm and distraction! Joan sat elbow on knee, hand pressed -against lips, her eyes wide, and, as far as Thames side was concerned, -unseeing. What else she saw she did not say, but her face had a soft -and brooding look.... The catch made its landing. Joan and Aderhold, -placed in the stern, were the last to come out upon the water stairs. -Before them the second mate shouldered his way. About them was the -English crowd, beneath their feet soil of England. Home—home—home -where they were born! - - - - -CHAPTER XXXI - -THE HOUR-GLASS - - -THEY were moving with the second mate through a busy street, toward -a harsh old pile of buildings. The mate was a watchful man. To start -aside from him into some court or lane or other street, to elude him -and vanish, was from the start a clearly hopeless thing. Did they -try it he would raise a hue and cry. They went with him in silence, -watching Fate to see what she would do. - -The street was narrow, the houses dark, and high, with overhanging -storeys, with swinging signs. Above showed only one pale stripe of sky. -There were booths and shops, with an occasional stentor crying of “What -d’ye lack?—What d’ye lack?” Many people went up and down—type after -type that Aderhold recalled. The years since he had been in London -had made no great difference. He thought that he discerned more party -men—in many a greater stiffness of bearing, a darker hue and plainer -cut in apparel. The chance words and phrases caught in passing had an -interest.... - -In old, old days there had come to him at times of crisis, a -detachment, an awareness of impersonality, a perception that, actor -here, he was no less spectator of his action, safe in further space -and time. The perception returned, and came with greater strength than -ever before, and with it, too, an old sense of deepening light. He -turned his face toward Joan beside him.... She was gazing upon London -town, her grey eyes calm and bright, her lips parted, rose colour in -her cheeks. In a manner she looked as young, as free from care and -danger as when, on a holiday, Joan Heron had come with her father from -the huntsman’s house in the castle wood and had strolled here and -there and to and fro in the town six miles from Hawthorn. She looked -as young and like a girl, and yet the next moment there moved beside -him the woman, the mind and soul that had grown. But the calmness held, -the bright stillness, the manner of radiance. She put out her hand and -touched Aderhold’s. “Do you feel it?—I felt only fear this morning, -but now, somehow, I do not believe that I shall ever feel fear again. -The things that were so great have become little.” - -The early morning had been clear, but the sky, overcast when they left -the Eagle, was now darkening rapidly. There came a silver dash of rain, -increasing to a downpour. With slanted bodies and bent heads men and -women hastened to shelter. Some hurried on to destinations not so far -away; others, with farther to go, took present refuge under overhanging -eaves or in doorways. The rain fell with a steady, rushing sound; the -gutters began to fill and overflow; the air grew dark and still. “Stand -by,” said the mate, “until the cloud empties!” The three stepped under -the cover of an antique porch, so jutting from the building of which it -made a part that the street had been forced to bend. Others were here -before them, perhaps a dozen in all. Some were citizens, three or four -country or small town people, viewing the sights of London. These had -with them for guide and showman some city friend. - -The latter was speaking with distinctness, in a cheerful and complacent -voice. “This was one of the old religious houses. Over yonder used to -be a field where in Queen Mary’s time they burned people.” - -The country folk looked with interest, not at the old religious house, -but at the row of small buildings where once had been the field. - -One spoke. “Did you ever see a man or woman burned?” - -“No,” said the citizen. “It’s dying out. They mostly hang people now.” - -A man in a sad-coloured dress spoke with an abrupt, harsh voice. “There -are sins that you should burn for. I believe not in your weak mercy. -What is good enough for God on High is good enough for me. He burns -sinners. If you do not believe in burning sinners, you do not believe -in God as shown forth in his written Word.” - -“I think witches should be burned,” said the citizen. - -The first country speaker put in his word again. “I saw one burned once -when I was a young man! She was a tall, fair wench, and when the flames -went up around her she cried out only one thing to the crowd of us -watching. She cried it thrice. ‘When you feel fire, feel what you have -believed!’” - -“What did she mean?” asked the citizen. - -“I do not know,” answered the countryman. “There’s been an outbreak of -witches this summer! They’re getting very bold in the North. If you -hear of one, the next day you hear of another. For one thing, as soon -as there’s known to be a witch abroad, people are on the lookout—” - -The downpour of rain had lessened into a shower. - -“Make sail!” said the mate. - -Leaving the porch, the three from the Eagle moved on up the narrow -street between the rain-washed houses. They were now at no great -distance from their destination. As they walked the two tried to hear -the questions that would be put to them and to frame answers.... But -it was difficult, difficult. In both the impulse that was gathering -strength, that was, as they both now began to perceive, the destined -conqueror, was the impulse still to serve the truth. They were not -fanatic, and they loved life. But side by side with the recognition -that hardly, hardly could they escape, that they would have to make a -tissue of statements that could and in all human likelihood would be -disproved, streamed stronger and stronger the distaste for that web of -misstatement, the liking for a plain relation of their being and its -acts. They were conscious of no ecstasy, no hot, martyr enthusiasm, but -direction was taken. With that deep inward movement came to each a -feeling of strengthened personality, of unison, harmony.... - -The wet and glistening street, the houses, the roofs, the sky, the -people passing up and down,—the windows, the signs—Before them they -saw a swinging tavern sign, painted and cut in the shape of a great -hourglass. The tavern had a wide window, overhanging the street, and in -the window, as the three from the Eagle came in line with it, appeared -the ruddy, determined face of the agent of the Company. He looked -out upon the street from which the rain had in great part driven the -people; saw and hailed his fellow voyagers. - -“Well met, good folk! Whither away—” - -The second mate told the port to which they were making. The man in the -window was a person of importance to the Eagle and its seamen. The mate -spoke with deference, and was ready to listen when the agent proposed -that he and the two shipwrecked folk enter the Hour-Glass and drink a -cup of wine. He knew that the agent had seemed to have a liking for the -castaways—and they were not precisely folk under suspicion, but only -to be, as it were, certified for. The agent spoke again with a touch of -authority, and the mate said, “Very good, sir, and thank you kindly! A -few minutes won’t matter.” - -The determined-faced man had the inn’s best room and had it to himself. -He welcomed into it Giles and Ellice Herne, but left the mate in the -common room with the host and a command for what he pleased to drink. - -The mate spoke again. “I’m ordered, sir, not to let the shipwrecked -people out of my sight.” - -“If you stay where you are you will see them still,” said the agent. -“There is but one door to this room, and I leave it open.” - -The room had a sanded floor, a table, and benches. Outside the clouds -were parting, and now a stormy sunlight broke through the window. The -street began again to fill with people and their voices came confusedly -into the room. A drawer brought wine. - -“I frequent this inn,” said the agent. “Moreover, by good luck, I -find that a man whom I greatly desire to see is in London and sleeps -here at the Hour-Glass. I await him now, and in the mean time lack -entertainment.—I was glad to see you coming up the street.” He poured -wine. “Here’s to the Eagle and freedom!—Has England changed to your -eyes?” - -“Yes and no,” said Aderhold. - -Bow bells were ringing. The sunlight suddenly flooded the room. Without -the door the mate’s rumbling voice was heard. “Two castaways—” - -“I have been gone a year,” said the agent. “The man that I am looking -for is a coming man in England, and I expect to learn from him—” - -The agent and Aderhold were standing by the table, but Joan had seated -herself where through the open casement she could see the clearing -sky. The movement brought her into the shaft of light. It bathed, it -etherealized face and form. She looked an immortal.... Placed so, -she came first before the eye when the man, whose step was now heard -without, swung the door wider and entered the room. - -The agent started from the table. “Ha, Harry Carthew! I looked to find -you—” - -But Carthew had neither eye nor ear for the returned acquaintance and -fellow-resister of the King. Harry Carthew stood like a man turned to -stone.... Six years alone could not have made him look so much older. -He looked much older—a stern and worn man, with a grim mouth and eyes -where enthusiasm now burned bright and now sank among the embers of -itself. He was dressed much as he used to dress. It was the face and -figure of the man who had come to Heron’s cottage, but there had been a -long warfare in the nature and some degree of change. He stood starkly -silent, with a great, arrested look, as if the very elements of his -being stood still.... Joan, rising, passed from the beam of light into -the shadow by Aderhold. They stood side by side, hand touching hand. -With a final crash and clangour the bells stopped ringing. - -“What is it?” demanded the agent. “You know these people—” - -Carthew moistened his lips. They parted, but at first there came forth -only an uncertain and broken sound. Then,—“You were long sought. But -when the Silver Queen came back from Virginia we learned that you had -escaped upon her, but had been thrown from her for what you were, and -were dead. Years ago ... and you stand there....” - -The mate of the Eagle came to the door. “Sir, may we be going now?” - -The agent crossed to him. “Not yet. Wait a little, there without—” -A voice spoke from behind the mate. “I am with Master Carthew. I may -enter, sir?” - -The agent turned back into the room, and with him came a slight man -with a steeple-crowned hat and a Geneva cloak. Joan and Aderhold faced -Master Thomas Clement. - -At last there came from the minister’s lips, “Thou witch! Thou atheist -and sorcerer!” - -The agent of the Company struck his hand against the table. “Who are -these?” - -Harry Carthew turned and walked stiffly to the window-seat. When he -reached it he sank down, rested his locked arms against the sill, and -his forehead upon his arms. But Master Clement was of more iron make. -His long forefinger shot out toward the two; he raised his arms, the -black cloak falling away from them, his small figure dilated; he shook -his lean and nervous hands; his voice, beginning on a low tone, grew -shrill and rapid; his eyes burned. Zeal for the honour of his God had -him. - -“Who are they? Scorners of God and deniers of Revelation! Yoke-fellows -with Satan and blaspheming workers and doers of evil! Who are they? -Breakers forth from prison and just doom—cheaters of stake and -gallows—froth of hell! Who are they? Say not that you have forgotten -the Hawthorn trials!” - -“The Hawthorn trials!” - -“Who in England heard not of them? Of the wicked certain ones were -hanged, but there broke gaol and escaped the unbeliever and sorcerer -Gilbert Aderhold and the witch Joan Heron!” He stretched his arms -higher, he shook his hands more vehemently. “But God for his glory,” he -said, “bringeth them back!” - -Aderhold and Joan stood straight and silent. The shock of the encounter -had driven the colour from cheek and lip, but there was no other -sign of cowing. They knew now that they were in the arms of death. -The knowledge did not frighten. This very day they had taken their -direction—they were moving now as they had determined.... The agent -leaned against the table, pale and staring. - -Aderhold turned and spoke to him. “Our names are Joan Heron and -Gilbert Aderhold. We are not witch and sorcerer—nor yoke-fellows with -Satan—nor blasphemers of good. But we were judged by our neighbours -and by the law to be such, and we were condemned to death and put in -prison. By the help of a gaoler who is dead we escaped. We managed to -stow ourselves upon the Silver Queen. In the seas near the island where -the Eagle found us, our names were discovered and the Silver Queen -cast us adrift. By this fortune and by that we came first to a larger -island and then to the islet from which the Eagle took us. That, so -far as is needful to tell you, is our story. You have been good to us, -knowing only what we showed. If you will believe, what we showed was -ourselves.” - -Joan’s voice, a rich, clear, low voice, followed his. “I am no witch, -and he is no sorcerer. I was a country girl and he a physician who -helped many. Now we are a man and woman who fare forward, wishing no -ill to any.” - -As she spoke she moved, unconsciously, a step nearer to the table. The -agent of the Company recoiled, put out his hand against her closer -approach. In his face was a white horror. He remembered the Hawthorn -witch trial. That year he had chanced to be in company with the elder -Carthew, and no detail but had been given him. The very words of a -ballad made upon the witch Joan Heron came into mind—forgotten, he -might have thought, long since, but now flashing out in letters of -fire—hell fire. It had been a ballad sold and bought throughout -England, and it spared no strange assertion, nor none that was gross. -_The Witch Joan Heron._ The ballad rang in his ears. He saw its title. -THE ABHORRED WITCH; or, THE MONSTROUS LIFE OF JOAN HERON.... A look of -sickness passed over the agent’s face, no longer ruddy. He put his arm -above his eyes. “Avaunt, witch!” he said. - -Joan stepped back. Her eyes sought Aderhold’s. He bent toward her, took -her hands. She smiled and said in the Indian tongue they had learned -upon that island. “Heart of my heart! The great sea is cold at first—” - -“Hark!” cried Master Clement. “She speaks the tongue she learned of -Apollyon!” - -Harry Carthew rose from the window-seat. His face was yet without -colour, drawn and sunken, grim and set. For the most part, with an -iron effort, he kept his voice under control, but now it broke and -sank and now it took a cadence of pain and horror. He leaned against -the wall for support, and once or twice he lifted his eyes to where, -in his thought, there sat God whom he had angered. “Master Clement, -and my friend here,” he said, “God knows I cannot doubt that this man -is a sorcerer and this woman a witch! In his Bible God tells us that -there are such and commands that they be done to death. Moreover, from -old time, wise judges and men of law and knowledge, and devout and -holy preachers of the Word have showed us how these wicked abound! As -for these two, all manner of witness was brought against them, and -proof irrefragable. Yea, and those who were hanged confessed that -these two kept by day and by night companionship with Satan and did -monstrous wickednesses. And that the man is an apostate and blasphemer, -an atheist worthy of death, has been proved—nay, he himself denied -nothing in that sort. All that, and the doom pronounced against them, -in this world and in the next, stands for true and lasting, and I have -no part in it, and there the shadow comes not against me.... But there -is a sin upon my soul, and God gives me no rest until I tell it—” -He wheeled toward Master Clement. “I will tell it here and now, and -appoint me a day and I will tell it in open church—So may offended God -pardon me!” - -“Harry Carthew! Harry Carthew!” cried Master Clement. “Every man alive -has sin against his soul! The soul of every man alive is black as -midnight, and no dawn cometh to it save from one that is not himself! -Unless and save the dayspring chooseth to shine upon that soul, it -resteth black and lost—it hath in itself no power of motion and light! -But God hath elected thee, Harry Carthew! But this man and woman are of -the deep gulf of hell, predestined and damned of eternity! What have -you to do with them, my brother, my son—for Christ knoweth I love thee -as a son—” - -“What had I to do with them?” said Carthew. “I will tell you! At -the trial in the town I gave evidence that he struck me in the side -with a dagger that eve upon his road to prison. I lied. Sorcerer and -atheist though he be, he told truth when he said that he did not so. -And witch though she be, this woman told truth when there in the court -she cried out against me. She told truth when she cried that that -night I had come to her cottage to tempt her and that she struck me -with a hunting-knife.... What was I? I was a young man, mad for a -fair woman—fair as her mother Eve who sinned before her! What was -I? I was a man desirous to increase in name and fame, desirous of -leadership—who therefore must not let men view his sin! But it was -sin, and I know not if there be a greater—” - -If he began as to a more general audience, he ended with a haggard-eyed -appeal to Master Clement.... The minister’s frame trembled; with a pale -and scared face he fronted Harry Carthew whom he truly loved. “Harry -Carthew! Harry Carthew! Pray to God—” - -“I pray,” said Carthew. “Night and day, I wrestle in prayer. I thought -that He had answered and given me peace in service. The moment I ceased -to serve and to act for this England, that moment Gehenna opened in -my soul.... But now I see that He wanteth open confession.” He turned -upon the two where they stood beyond the shaft of light. “Joan Heron, -I wronged you,—and Gilbert Aderhold, I wronged you,—and that I must -say, though you be the Fiend’s own! I must say it, though I stood in -heaven and looked across the gulf upon you in hell—” He sank upon a -bench by the table and flung his clasped hands above his head. “God, -God! Grant me but to save my soul alive!” - -Silence held in the room at the Hour-Glass. The agent of the Company -leaned against the table, white and shaken. Master Clement came to -Carthew, put his hand on his shoulder, and spoke in a trembling -voice. “A great sin verily, and greatly to be repented.... But not -the great sin, Harry Carthew—not the Unpardonable Sin.... God will -have mercy. He will forgive. Have you not served Him well, and will -you not do so, ever the more zealously? And will you not forever more -guard your ways, that you fall not again into the pit? I trow that you -will! Harry Carthew—Harry Carthew, we will pray together! You are too -valuable—This very night I will come, and on our knees we will wrestle -with Him as did Jacob of old—” - -Joan and Aderhold stood hand in hand. What now they felt and thought -was simple and whole. This room with its occupants seemed not to have -over-greatly to do with them—it had widened out—they felt a larger -world.... It was as though these old quarrels were childish concerns -and fears and quarrels—small, intense, unknowing things—childish, -pitiful. They felt them so, and yet they did not feel old, they felt -young.... - -Aderhold spoke, again to the agent of the Company. “Knowing nothing -of our story, save that we were shipwrecked folk, you showed us much -kindness. It does not hurt to take the thanks of shipwrecked folk. -Believe that we are grateful for that kindness. This is to end, we -know, in giving us into the hands of the law. Then let them call those -who will take us.” - -Carthew rose from the seat where he had thrown himself. What wild -emotion had possessed and actuated him was driven to cover and -stillness. His face was grey, but set and grim with no softening in its -lines. He would have said that softening were further sin. Out like a -burned candle had gone long since his passion for Joan Heron that had -never been high love. - -His eyes met those of Master Clement, “Aye,” he said, “end it!” - -Master Clement nodded, turned, and left the room. - -There was, it seemed, no great distance to send, and those sent for -were not long in coming. Without the Hour-Glass it was now bright -afternoon and many people going up and down. Whenever and wherever -watch or ward was summoned the act of its summoning was apt immediately -to become known. It was so here and now, and a crowd began to gather -before the Hour-Glass. How there started a whisper of heinous crime, -of escaped and retaken caitiffs, it were hard to say. Perhaps the host -or the now staring and greatly excited mate of the Eagle had heard -somewhat and had repeated what he had heard. But there started a murmur -which grew to a buzzing sound and threatened to become clamour. “What -was done?—Who is it? Ho, there, Hour-Glass! What happened?” The law -appeared—half a dozen burly armed men with an officer at their head. -“Within the Hour-Glass! Let us pass, good people, let us pass!” They -entered the tavern. Outside the crowd and the noise grew. “Traitors?” -cried one, and another, “Poisoners?” but a third, “I can see through -the window. It’s a woman—_Witch! Witch!_” - - - - -CHAPTER XXXII - -A JOURNEY - - -THEY lay for a month in prison in London. Then, all procedures having -been met, the law would return them to the county where they had -offended and the gaol from which they had broken and the gallows field -which had waited six years. - -They rode from London in company of a sheriff and a dozen horsemen, -and they went by the road which Aderhold had travelled years before. -He recognised this place and that. Where the ways were bad—and they -were often bad—they dismounted and went afoot. So many were with -them and so no danger at all was there of escape, that they were left -unshackled, were even let to draw a little to themselves. At first the -guard was rough of tongue, ready with frequent, unneeded commands, -ready with coarse gibes. But the two answered quietly, or were silent -without sullenness, and there was something in them that gave check.... -At last the men conveyed them without insult, without much further -speech to them direct. At night, when they came to town or village, -they were lodged in the gaol. When they passed where there were people, -and if it became known what manner of felons were here, they met with -savage jeers and execrations. Sometimes mud was thrown, sometimes -flints. But it was not the guard’s cue to tell names and offence—and -England was not as populous then as now—and there were long miles -of lonely peace. To Joan and Aderhold they seemed at times miles of -a beautiful, a sunny peace. They knew how to talk together with few -words, with a glance of the eye. And there were many times when, some -space allowed them and the guards talking among themselves, the road -became as it were their own. Then they spoke freely, though with low -voices. - -It was late summer, with autumn well in view upon the slope of the -year. The landscape was growing russet, and none the less fair for -that. And it was England—England after the blue plains of the sea and -the low, coral isles. And it was country and pure air after the fetid -London prison. And it was the land where they were born—it was home, -seen after years away. These green fields and spreading trees—this -English sky—these birds and flowers and crystal streams—these were -no foes of theirs. These had never cast them out. Here as elsewhere, -the great round earth had its own orthodoxy, but took scant heed of -man’s.... They saw England after long absence; and for all that they -were to be slain here, they could find it beautiful, and for all that -they knew where ended this road, they played with the happenings upon -it. - -Twenty miles out from London the sheriff’s horse cast a shoe, and at -the next smithy all must halt until Grey Dick was shod. The smithy -stood in the pleasant shadow of an oak so great that it must have -been growing when the Conqueror came over. The hot smithy fire glowed -within, iron struck rhythmically against iron. Beyond the tree was -a well, and all were thirsty. They had not drawn bridle for several -hours. The men dismounted—the two prisoners were given leave to do -likewise, even to rest upon the earth beneath the oak. - -The four children of the smith sat upon a log and watched with an -intensity of interest horses and men and all their movements, and the -man and woman half sitting, half lying beneath the oak. The smithy dog -came up to these two, snuffed around them, and then lay down at their -feet. _Clink! Clink!_ and the trees began to wave in an afternoon -breeze, and the voices of the men about the well and the smithy door -sounded cheerful and hardy. The two had no misliking for the bright -world. They sat watching the children.... The youngest child, a -yellow-haired mite of three, would make an excursion of its own from -the log, past the oak, to the door. In the course of the journey it -came upon a protruding root, stumbled over it and fell. Joan sprang -forward and lifted it to its feet. “There, there! You’re not hurt—Look -at the pretty flower you fell against!” The child decided not to cry, -laughed instead. Joan’s arm curved about the sturdy small form and -pressed it to her. “Ah, what a good baby!”—The child was willing to -stay and play, but with suddenness found herself released, given a -gentle push back toward the three upon the log. Joan took her seat -again upon the turf. “It wasn’t wise to touch her. It’s strange that it -should be so, but if any saw they might bring it against her when she -is grown.” - -She spoke without any pain for herself in her voice, but with yearning -and tenderness for the child. “Now she’s there and happy! She’s got a -stick to play with.” - -“Joan, Joan!” said Aderhold. “There will come a day—” - -The horse was shod, the well-water drunk, guard and prisoners took -again the road. The smith and his man had, at the last, their curiosity -satisfied. “Witches and wizards!—Nay, if I had known that—” - -The road presented its stream, here full, here very thin, of autumn -travel. Little pictures and the whole picture had a clear, a vivid -interest. Market people went by, drovers with cattle, sturdy beggars, -children, country girls and swains, carters and their carts, mounted -travel of merchants or justices or churchmen or country gentlemen. -The mounted travel would always, authoritatively, have its curiosity -gratified. “A ward with prisoners!—Who are your prisoners, -sheriff?” The second morning it was a party of young gallants who -would know this. They wore feathered hats, fine riding-clothes, -boots of soft leather, their hair somewhat long and curled. They -were for King and Church—would all live, perhaps, to fight on that -side. “Prisoners! What are your prisoners, sirrah!” Then, when they -knew,—“Witch! Witch! A young witch, too! Let’s see her—Zounds! -Who’s the man?... The Hawthorn two who fled! _Gilbert Aderhold—Joan -Heron!_” Certain of these gallants had been in London and knew of -the recapture. It had been common talk. The king had learned of it. -“Joan Heron!—Joan Heron! Let’s see—let’s see! Grey eyes—gold -hair—no, hair like bronze, pale bronze.... Would you dare to kiss a -witch?”—“No!”—“Yes!”—“No!”—“Yes, I would!”—“To make the Devil -jealous—that were a parlous thing!”—“Parlous or not, if she hath grey -eyes and red lips—”—“Kiss her—clip her in thy arms and to-night she -will come as _succuba_ and kiss and clip thee! Then hark to thy roar, -‘Avaunt, thou hag! Will none save me from the foul fiend?’”—“Joan -Heron! Rememberest the ballad, THE DEVIL AND JOAN HERON?”—“But thou’rt -not called ‘Daredevil’ for naught!”—“Do you dare me?”—“Yes, yes! We -dare you!”—“Kiss her hard, clip her fast—No, no. Master Sheriff! Fair -play—make a ring!... Now! Now!”... “_Well, thou hast courage!_”... -“_She did not struggle,—as do honest women or those who would be -thought honest!_” “To-night, to-night, when thou hast put out the -light, look to find her!”—“Ha, ha! ha, ha! JOAN HERON—” - -They won away from those of the feathered hats. Space widened between -the two cavalcades, the voices of the gallants died from the ear. The -road lay bright and sunny, the morning air blew fresh and sweet. The -great earth swept calm to the horizon, the sky sprang, a pure and -cloudless arch. For a long way the road ran lonely of travellers other -than the sheriff, his men, and the prisoners. Joan and Aderhold, riding -together, talked in low tones. After a time they were passing through -a forest. They loved the brown earth and the bracken, the boughs -overhead, the purple distances. - -“I remember this wood,” said Aderhold. “I lay and rested under -these trees and wondered what was before me.... And I could not see -_thee_.—I did not know the lovely thing that was before me.” - -“And that night, at home, I slept and dreamed—and saw not thee.” - -“There are glories in our lives. With every pain and sorrow counted in, -we have not been unhappy.” - -“No. Pain did not win. And the light was brighter yesterday than the -day before, and brighter to-day than yesterday.... Look at the bird -flying up!” - -The third night the troop did not arrive, in time for rest, at any -town or village. A heavy rain had fallen and delayed progress. They -came at dark to three or four mean houses, clustered around one of -better proportions, an inn by the sign just made out through the dusk -and the autumn mists. There was not much to eat, but it might be made -to do—straw could be shaken down—there was a great fireplace where -blazing warmth might be had.... To Joan and Aderhold, accustomed to -the sun, good was this warmth! There was one great stone-flagged room, -large as a baron’s hall. When the dozen men of their guard disposed -themselves, there was yet space where the ruddy glow might reach them, -dry their clothing wet with the rain, warm their bodies. Where there -was not overmuch for any, their portion of supper was small, indeed, -but it sufficed. When all would sleep, lying about the fire upon the -straw which the inn’s servitors brought in, the two were thrust to a -corner at the far end of the place, farthest from the door. A watch was -set—a stanch man relieved each two hours by another. The sheriff meant -no slipping of the wizard and witch out of his fingers. But sleeping -time was not yet come. The two sat to one side, watched, but no more -closely than was thought necessary. - -Beside the sheriff and his men there were the host and hostess, three -or four uncouth serving-men and maids, and one other traveller, belated -like the rest. This was a gentle-faced old man, the parson, it was -learned, of a parish a dozen miles away.... The night before, in a town -of fair size, the names of his prisoners becoming known, the sheriff -had had trouble to rescue them from the mob that gathered. This day, -therefore, he would keep secret the full heinousness of the pair—along -the way and here it was said only that they were a man and woman -accused of witchcraft and apostasy, being transferred from one gaol to -another. - -Under this description the inn folk looked aside at them with great -curiosity and fear. At supper time none could be found willing to -carry to them from the kitchen their bit of coarse bread and pitcher -of water. The host was busied elsewhere; the hostess put down her foot -that she would not; the men and maids laughed vacantly and stared, but -would not budge in that direction. The old man, the parson, who chanced -to be by, uttered a word of gentle chiding, then, as all still hung -back, himself picked up the bread and water and carried them to the -two. They thanked him. He stood looking at them with a gentle, pained -face. Called to supper at the long table where the sheriff and his men -were noisily taking places, he went away. But presently, his own frugal -meal quickly made, he came back. Theirs, too, was made. They were -seated on the stone flooring, shoulder against the wall, hand touching -hand. They had no look of wicked folk. - -The old man found a stool, brought it and sat down beside them. “You -look worn and tired. The roads have been bad to-day.” - -He spoke to Joan. “Bad here and there,” she said. “We are a little -tired.” - -The old man sat looking from one to the other. Then he spoke with -simplicity. “Is it true that you are apostates from religion?” - -“What,” said Aderhold, “is religion?—Is it love of good? Then, with -our hand in death’s, I dare aver that we are not apostates!” He smiled -at the old man. “Since we entered this room you have shown us a piece -of religion.” - -“I would show you truly,” said the old man earnestly. “I would show you -Jesus.” - -Aderhold answered gently. “You do so, sir. Believe that all of us know -Jesus when we meet him.” - -The old man looked from one to the other. “You do not seem to me wicked -people. I know not how it is, but you seem—” The sheriff and his men -rose noisily from table. There immediately ensued a bustle in the -place—boards and trestles being taken away—bundles of straw brought -in—men going forth to look after the horses—men coming in with the -breath of the wet night. One came and called the old parson, drew him -away toward the small inner room where he was to rest. Going, he said -but one word more to the two. “Good-night. I wish you good sleep.” - -The host who had called him held up his hands. “Reverend sir, I marvel -how you can stand to talk with such miscreants—” - -Joan and Aderhold lay upon the stone floor and slept.... Night passed, -the rain ceased, the clouds broke, dawn came with magnificence. The -old parson, approaching, too, in the course of nature, his death hour, -slept on like a child in the inner room. But Joan and Aderhold went -forward with the guard. The inn sank from sight, the road stretched -before them. - -This day, riding into a village, they found there, the centre until -their arrival of excited interest, no less a matter than an officer of -the law with three or four subordinates, come from the town to which -they were bound—despatched thence by the authorities with orders to -meet upon the way the party known to be bringing from London that witch -and sorcerer, join themselves to it, and so give touch of that town and -county’s importance, assuming charge, as it were, even leagues away, -of their own sinful ones.... Aderhold and Joan recognized the head -figure—across the years they saw him again at the Hawthorn trials—a -tall, lean, saturnine minor piece of the law’s machinery who had herded -the prisoners in and out of that hall of judgement. He was so tall and -lean and lantern-jawed and grim that he might have been a prize man for -the rôle of Death in a mystery play. For his part he came and looked -at them, threw back his head and laughed. “Ha, ha!” he said. “We’ve -got you back! The wicked do not prosper!” With that he returned to the -sheriff with whom he would ride.... This village was of the places -where stones and other matters were flung, together with whatever -epithet came to the lips. Joan and Aderhold opposed a quietness. Both -were bleeding when at last the law persuaded or threatened down the -raised hands and bore them away for its own blows. Out even upon the -open road came, borne by the wind, “Witch—Witch—Witch! Vile Witch!” - -There was a man with the added party who proved to be of kin to the -Hawthorn end of the county. He knew Hawthorn and Hawthorn Forest. -Riding near to the two prisoners and discoursing with his fellows, the -two heard mention of many a familiar name. He had a body of great bulk -and a round, good-humoured face, and a liking for his own speech which -he delivered—so as not to disturb his superiors—in a monotone of low -pitch. The two heard him talk of the Hawthorn crops and fields and -weather, of the times good and bad, of the stock, the sheep and cattle, -of the streams and woods, of the people.... This day was a high, cool -autumn day with a tang in the air. The sun shone, but there was a wind -and whirling leaves. Joan and Aderhold knew that now there were not -many miles.... At dusk they halted within a hamlet where the folk were -too few to do more than stare and talk. There was no gaol. The two were -thrust into a damp and dark place where firewood was piled. Bread and -water were given them, but no straw for sleeping upon. When the heavy -door was shut and barred, and those without and the hamlet’s self sunk -into sleep or silence, all was as black, as cold and still, as the -grave is supposed to be. - -The two knew that next day they would reach the town and the prison -from which, six years and more ago, they had fled away. There they -would be separated.... Probably they would die together—would be -brought forth together to die—might then each reach the other’s hand, -might clasp it until nearly the last. But not again in this life -would they be together like this, alone together, free, shut from the -world.... To-night, at first, all things flowed away save the fact that -they loved, save human passion and sorrow and clinging. They lay in the -space left by the heaped firewood, in the intense dark, and they held -each other in their arms, close, close! as if to defy all parting, and -there were broken words and sighs and tears. The last night—the last -night— - -The higher mood returned, though slowly, slowly. With the bending of -the night toward dawn, it was here. They lay with clasped hands, and -when they spoke they spoke of love. All things else flowed away, or -did not flow away, for it was now as though love tinted all, made the -vast whole warm and vital.... They spoke of their child, and of their -island life and home; they spoke of the old chief. They spoke of people -they had known and loved—of old Roger Heron, of Master Hardwick—of -many, of all people. The draff and dross, the crooked and bent, all -came into the glow, the solvent. Love—love—love!... Love took this -form and took that form, and now it flew with these wings, and now with -other wings—and it was love of the body and the earth and all nature, -and it was love of wisdom—love of knowledge—love of the search—love -of love—love of truth! It was love that was not afraid—that rose on -splendid wings—that outwatched the night and saw the morning coming.... - -Outside began, faintly, a stirring. A cock crew and was answered. A -dog barked—the cock-crow came again. A grey light stole in at the -keyhole and under the door of the windowless place they were in. It -strengthened until they could make out each other’s face and form. The -dog barked again, men’s voices were heard. - -Joan and Aderhold rose to their knees, to their feet, steadying each -other, holding by the firewood. The place, through the night, had -had the chill of the sepulchre. They knew it to be their last moment -together; hereafter, to the end, there would be others by. They stood -locked in each other’s arms, their lips meeting.... Steps were heard -without and the fall of the chain from across the door. They released -each other, they stood apart. The door swung open, light rushed in. -“Come forth, you wicked ones! Time to ride on—and to-night we’ll lodge -you in the nest you flew from!” - -There could not have been a fairer autumn day. And now as they rode the -country grew more and more familiar.... While the day was yet young, -all were halted for a few minutes before a tavern set among trees, -its sign a great rose painted on a black ground. While ale in jacks -and tankards was brought forth for the guardians of the law, the two -prisoners had brief speech together. - -“The Rose Tavern,” said Aderhold. “It was in this place that I first -met Master Hardwick. It was here that came the turn toward Hawthorn.” - -“We have not far to go now.” - -“No, not far.” - -In the doorway stood the tall hostess that Aderhold remembered. She -stood with arms akimbo, regarding the prisoners with a mien so hostile -as to approach the ferocious. “Aaah!” she said. “I’d like to help bring -straw and wood!” She spat toward the two. “Haven’t _I_ had things -bewitched?—a gold earring taken from under my eyes, and our ricks -burned, and ill luck for a year running—and a bat this summer came -flapping through the house every eve, and none could beat it down!” She -was speaking to the constable’s man who knew Hawthorn. “Wherever that -vile witch has been this weary time, be sure she’s sent her word out -over all these parts to do us harm—” - -“And that’s very possible,” said the round-faced man. - -“Aren’t you going to take them by Hawthorn?” - -“Yes,” answered the other. “Turn off this side of town—go round by -Hawthorn Wood—then through Hawthorn, and so back to town and the -prison. It’s miles out, but Hawthorn wants it done. There’s a murmur of -more witches—and it’s good warning to see how such folk fare!” - -Joan and Aderhold, startled, exchanged glances. They had not thought of -that—of coming to their prison from the Hawthorn end. They would be -longer together. Joan’s lips parted. “And Hawthorn Forest—Ah, maybe we -shall see Heron’s cottage—” - -The sun and shadow on the road, the waving trees, the white fleets of -clouds in a blue, blue sky.... They came to the crossroads with the -suicide’s grave—they came to the rise of earth where stood the gibbet -with its swinging chains—they came to a view of the castle wood and -the castle and the town beyond. One of the men asked a question of the -round-faced man. “Who lives up there?” - -“The earl,” said the round-faced man. “But he’s away now. It used to be -that if he wasn’t there his cousin, Sir Richard, was. But Sir Richard -went to France, and they say he married there and has a son.—I used to -know Gervaise his man. But Gervaise has gone too.” - -The sun made of the castle woods golden woods. Joan could see the Black -Tower—see where deep among the trees would be the huntsman’s house. A -great bird rose above the gold-green and sailed away.... Here, a mile -from the first outlying house, was the narrow and little-used road -that, curving aside from the town, led through some miles of country, -tilled and untilled, to Hawthorn Forest; then, with a half turn, came -at its leisure to Hawthorn, and so touched again the highway. They took -this road. - -Until they came to a stream, in size between a brook and a river, -the country was to the two as the other familiar country. But this -was the stream that murmured past the Oak Grange. They were riding by -its shore, they were going toward the Grange—now indeed it grew to -be known land. Aderhold knew every winding.... The two rode as in a -dream. Before them, in the distance, in a golden haze, rose a forest. -“Hawthorn Wood”—and Joan’s voice made the words dreamy music. The sun -was warm now, the sky was blue, the leaves were falling, but without -sadness, ready to go, to return once more to the elements, build again. -The stream bent and the road with it. There came a long reach of -murmuring water, sliding by a pebbly strand. Across it now were fields -that once had gone with the Oak Grange.... A little farther, and they -saw the old house, and before it the fairy oak. - -Just at the footbridge across the stream sounded an order to halt. The -lean, grim man whom the town had sent spoke in a harsh and rattling -voice. “This is where he made gold and practised sorcery.—Thou -God-denier! behold thy old lair, how accursed it looks!” - -To the two it did not seem accursed. It stood an old, deserted, ruinous -house, but the ivy was green upon it, and the sunshine bathed it, and -the swallows circled above the roof. The oak tree in front lived, and -from its acorns were growing other oaks.... Joan and Aderhold looked -long and earnestly. The air was thronged with memories and there -seemed a weaving music. They were not unhappy—the artifex within them -was not unhappy. But those that were with them thought that they must -be so. - -The horses were in motion again. And now the road turned and became -Hawthorn Forest road that ran to Hawthorn. The Oak Grange passed -from sight, the murmur of the stream left the ears. They were within -Hawthorn Forest. The great trees rose around; there fell gold shafts -of light; there came the odour, damp and rich, of the forest mould -deepening, deepening since old time. Down a purple vista they saw deer -moving—a faint wind was blowing—there was a drifting, drifting down -of leaves.... To Joan and Aderhold this forest breathed music. They -were glad to be here once again. They knew the single trees and the -groups of trees, they knew each picture within a picture: loved the -detail and loved the whole. It was sweet, before death, to have been in -Hawthorn Wood again. - -Heron’s cottage. When they were forth from the forest they would see -that plainly, riding by. Perhaps they would draw rein there too. The -red crept into Joan’s cheek, her grey eyes grew bright and wistful.... -The forest stopped; the grassy road brought them out into full -sunshine, a high blue sky arching the open, autumn country. Heron’s -cottage.... There was yet the green path from the road, yet the fruit -trees, bronze now and trembling in the wind—but there was no thatched -cottage. “Vile witch!” said the tall man, “Hawthorn burned your house.” - -Hawthorn—there was no great distance now to Hawthorn. There had never -been much passing on this road, little human life going up and down. -This day there seemed none; moreover, a cot or two by the wayside -showed no folk about the doors, appeared shut and left to care for -themselves. At dawn a man had been sent forward on a fresh horse—the -loneliness of the road now connected itself with that. “Everybody’s -gone to Hawthorn,” said the round-faced man. - -Hawthorn Church, stone amid stone-like yew trees, Hawthorn roofs showed -over the rim of the fields. Out of a coppice rose a lark and soaring -high sang up there in the blue. The Hawthorn Forest road joined the -highroad; guard and prisoners coming upon this turned now to Hawthorn -village. Carthew House—they passed Carthew House—they passed the -outlying cottages, among them that of Alison Inch—they came into -Hawthorn and to Hawthorn Church and Master Clement’s house. Here were -the people.... - -A bench had been placed by the churchyard gate, and upon this stood -Master Clement, raised as by a pulpit over Hawthorn. Near him stood -Squire Carthew and his brother, and the latter stood grim and grey as -granite. It was his intention to rise in church the coming Sunday and -before all Hawthorn acknowledge that six-years-past sin. He owed that -to God. The confession might or might not put in jeopardy his future -in England, but, however that might be, he would make it—make it -publicly! So he might have peace and could go on with the great work, -assured that God had forgiven.... For to-day he had made himself come -hither, taking it as part of his duty. Master Clement had urged that it -was his duty. With a stern face he gazed upon the two, but they, after -one glance, looked at him no more. - -All around, packed in the churchyard and the street, were the people of -Hawthorn and its neighbourhood. How many familiar faces they saw—but -how few out of which superstition had not razed kindliness! Heretofore -on this journey, where they had been set in the eye of a gathered -crowd, the two had met with physical blows no less than with hard -words. But the Hawthorn throng was held in hand. No stone or clod or -refuse was thrown. The hard words arose, broke over them heavily, a -sordid and bitter wave. But this, too, the minister checked. He raised -his arms and flung them wide, he shook his lean and nervous hands. -Thrust to the front of the throng stood the tinker with whom Joan had -once walked on the road from the town. “Hist, hist!” said the tinker. -“Now will they hear their last sermon!” - -“‘_And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and -hell delivered up the dead which were in them, and they were judged -according to their works.... And whosoever was not found written in -the book of life was cast into the lake of fire!_’ - -“‘_And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire -and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be -tormented day and night forever and ever._’” - -Hawthorn drew in its breath and shivered with that sermon. They said -that it was the greatest that Master Clement had ever preached, and -he had preached a-many great ones! Some of the simpler folk almost -looked for fire to come down from heaven and consume the wicked leech -and that vilest witch where they stood. It would have been a wonderful -sight and lesson! But doubtless God wanted the forms of the law carried -out—though they could not but still think how wonderful would have -been a visible sign.... - -Joan and Aderhold were an hour in Hawthorn.... It passed; all hours -passed, though some, and this among them, went on wounded feet. - -It passed. They were in motion again. The Hawthorn folk that cried -bitter words behind them, the narrow street, the small, familiar houses -with dooryards where the flowers were fading, the ale-house, the green, -the sexton’s house, other houses, the elms and willows that marked the -village end—all were overpassed, left behind. Here at last was the -open road, and they had six miles to ride together.... Hawthorn faded -from the mind. - -It was afternoon. The gold light lay softly over the country that -had always seemed to them a very fair country—that seemed so still. -The wind had fallen. They rode side by side. Those that guarded them -were tired with the long day and its various excitements. These rode -in silence or talked among themselves in voices somewhat subdued, -and for a time let the prisoners go unmarked. When they came within -sight of the town it would be different. Then all would straighten in -their saddles and closely surround the two, assuming the proper air of -vigilance. But now they allowed them to ride side by side and gave no -heed to what words they might speak to each other. - -They were simple words that Joan and Aderhold spoke—old, old words of -love and tenderness. They spoke of courage. And they spoke of Truth, -the Origin and Goal. And they loved each other, and the light of all -suns, and they found song and sweetness, promise and fulfilment even in -this autumnal day.... - -The miles fell away like the leaves from the trees. The ground rose; -they had a great view bathed in the amber light. There flowed a -gleaming crescent. “The river!” said Joan. - -The town that they had seen from the south, now they saw from the -north. They saw the river and the arched bridge, the climbing streets -and many roofs; they saw the great church and near it the dark prison, -and above the town the castle and the castle wood. The sun was sinking, -the light was reddening; above, the sky sprang pure, without a stain, -for the fleets of clouds had sailed away. - -The tall, lean man spoke. “Witch and blasphemer! do you see yon ragged -field sloping down? That is where we will hang you.” - -Joan and Aderhold, going toward the river, looked upon the ragged field -with steadfastness, but gave but few moments to that sight. Before -them was the arched bridge, and they saw, even on this side of it, -people gathering. Presently the sheriff’s men would come between them, -surrounding each, making one go before the other. Now they had these -last few moments side by side. Their hands might touch, their eyes -be eloquent. Farewell—and farewell—and oh, fare you well, love—my -love!... - -The road descended to the river and the bridge. There arose the sound -they knew from the crowd they knew. The sheriff’s men pushed between -them; they must go one before the other. So each might be better seen -as well as better guarded. They crossed the river; they mounted the -steep street; they came to the town square, past the great church’s -sculptured portal.... The two had been ordered to dismount, were now -afoot.... Here was the pillory—here was the black prison’s frowning -front, the prison steps, the open door.... The setting sun flooded -the place with red light. A flint, flung by some strong arm, had -cut Aderhold’s forehead. With his hand he wiped the blood away and -looked to see Joan. She was upon the prison steps, lifted so that -the roaring crowd might see her. That great light from the sun beat -strongly upon face and form. The form was drawn to its height, the face -was high, resolved, and beautiful. But the crowd shouted, “The witch! -The witch! Look at the light as of fire! The fire has her already! -Witch—Witch—Witch!” - -Joan mounted the last step, the black prison gaped for her, she -entered. Aderhold, mounting, met also that great shaft of light. The -voice of the crowd swelled, grew phrensied, but he heeded it not, and -with a face lit from within followed Joan into the prison. - - -THE END - - - - - The Riverside Press - CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS - U·S·A - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Witch, by Mary Johnston - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WITCH *** - -***** This file should be named 53109-0.txt or 53109-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/3/1/0/53109/ - -Produced by Giovanni Fini, sp1nd and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: The Witch - -Author: Mary Johnston - -Release Date: September 21, 2016 [EBook #53109] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WITCH *** - - - - -Produced by Giovanni Fini, sp1nd and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - -</pre> - -<div class="limit"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<div class="transnote p4"> -<p class="pc large">TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:</p> -<p class="ptn">—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.</p> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<div class="chapter"> -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/cover.jpg" width="350" height="540" alt="" /> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i">[i]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<div class="bord"> - -<p class="pc f1 large">By Mary Johnston</p> - -<hr class="d1" /> - -<p class="pad"><span class="f2">HAGAR.</span></p> - -<p class="pad"><span class="f2">THE LONG ROLL.</span> The first of two books dealing -with the war between the States. With Illustrations -in color by <span class="smcap">N. C. Wyeth</span>.</p> - -<p class="pad"><span class="f2">CEASE</span> FIRING. The second of two books dealing -with the war between the States. With Illustrations -in color by <span class="smcap">N. C. Wyeth</span>.</p> - -<p class="pad"><span class="f2">LEWIS RAND.</span> With Illustrations in color by <span class="smcap">F. C. -Yohn</span>.</p> - -<p class="pad"><span class="f2">AUDREY.</span> With Illustrations in color by <span class="smcap">F. C. Yohn</span>.</p> - -<p class="pad"><span class="f2">PRISONERS OF HOPE.</span> With Frontispiece.</p> - -<p class="pad"><span class="f2">TO HAVE AND TO HOLD.</span> With 8 Illustrations by -<span class="smcap">Howard Pyle</span>, <span class="smcap">E. B. Thompson</span>, <span class="smcap">A. W. Betts</span>, and -<span class="smcap">Emlen McConnell</span>.</p> - -<p class="pad"><span class="f2">THE GODDESS OF REASON.</span> <i>A Drama.</i></p> - -<hr class="d1" /> - -<p class="pc">HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY<br /> -<span class="smcap">Boston and New York</span></p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">[ii]</a></span></p> -<p> </p> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[iii]</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/fr.jpg" width="400" height="561" - alt="" - title="" /> - <div class="caption"><p class="pr reduct wn">(p. <a href="#Page_154">154</a>)</p> - <p class="pc">“GOOD-BYE, MISTRESS FRIENDLY-SOUL!”</p> -</div></div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[iv]</a></span></p> - -<h1 class="p4">THE WITCH</h1> -<p class="pc4 lmid">BY</p> - -<p class="pc1 large">MARY JOHNSTON</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/logo.jpg" width="200" height="274" - alt="" - title="" /> -</div> - -<p class="pc4">BOSTON AND NEW YORK</p> -<p class="pc mid">HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY</p> -<p class="pc mid f1">The Riverside Press Cambridge</p> -<p class="pc">1914</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></span></p> - -<p class="pc4 reduct">COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY MARY JOHNSTON<br /> -ALL RIGHTS RESERVED<br /> -<i>Published October 1914</i></p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="p4">CONTENTS</h2> - -<table id="toc" summary="cont"> - - <tr> - <td class="tdr">I.</td> - <td class="tdl1"><span class="smcap">The Queen’s Chamber</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td> - </tr> - - <tr> - <td class="tdr">II.</td> - <td class="tdl1"><span class="smcap">The Cap and Bells</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_10">10</a></td> - </tr> - - <tr> - <td class="tdr">III.</td> - <td class="tdl1"><span class="smcap">The Two Physicians</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_24">24</a></td> - </tr> - - <tr> - <td class="tdr">IV.</td> - <td class="tdl1"><span class="smcap">The Rose Tavern</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_37">37</a></td> - </tr> - - <tr> - <td class="tdr">V.</td> - <td class="tdl1"><span class="smcap">The Road to Hawthorn</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_54">54</a></td> - </tr> - - <tr> - <td class="tdr">VI.</td> - <td class="tdl1"><span class="smcap">The Man with the Hawk</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_69">69</a></td> - </tr> - - <tr> - <td class="tdr">VII.</td> - <td class="tdl1"><span class="smcap">Joan</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_82">82</a></td> - </tr> - - <tr> - <td class="tdr">VIII.</td> - <td class="tdl1"><span class="smcap">The Squire’s Brother</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_97">97</a></td> - </tr> - - <tr> - <td class="tdr">IX.</td> - <td class="tdl1"><span class="smcap">The Oak Grange</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_109">109</a></td> - </tr> - - <tr> - <td class="tdr">X.</td> - <td class="tdl1"><span class="smcap">In Hawthorn Forest</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_124">124</a></td> - </tr> - - <tr> - <td class="tdr">XI.</td> - <td class="tdl1"><span class="smcap">The Plague</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_136">136</a></td> - </tr> - - <tr> - <td class="tdr">XII.</td> - <td class="tdl1"><span class="smcap">Heron’s Cottage</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_151">151</a></td> - </tr> - - <tr> - <td class="tdr">XIII.</td> - <td class="tdl1"><span class="smcap">Hawthorn Church</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_165">165</a></td> - </tr> - - <tr> - <td class="tdr">XIV.</td> - <td class="tdl1"><span class="smcap">Night</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_176">176</a></td> - </tr> - - <tr> - <td class="tdr">XV.</td> - <td class="tdl1"><span class="smcap">Next Day</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_188">188</a></td> - </tr> - - <tr> - <td class="tdr">XVI.</td> - <td class="tdl1"><span class="smcap">Master Thomas Clement</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_204">204</a></td> - </tr> - - <tr> - <td class="tdr">XVII.</td> - <td class="tdl1"><span class="smcap">Mother Spuraway</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_218">218</a></td> - </tr> - - <tr> - <td class="tdr">XVIII.</td> - <td class="tdl1"><span class="smcap">The Gaol</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_235">235</a></td> - </tr> - - <tr> - <td class="tdr">XIX.</td> - <td class="tdl1"><span class="smcap">Aderhold and Carthew</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_246">246</a></td> - </tr> - - <tr> - <td class="tdr">XX.</td> - <td class="tdl1"><span class="smcap">The Witch Judge</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_260">260</a></td> - </tr> - - <tr> - <td class="tdr">XXI.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span></td> - <td class="tdl1"><span class="smcap">The Witch</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_272">272</a></td> - </tr> - - <tr> - <td class="tdr">XXII.</td> - <td class="tdl1"><span class="smcap">Escape</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_281">281</a></td> - </tr> - - <tr> - <td class="tdr">XXIII.</td> - <td class="tdl1"><span class="smcap">The Road to the Port</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_298">298</a></td> - </tr> - - <tr> - <td class="tdr">XXIV.</td> - <td class="tdl1"><span class="smcap">The Farther Road</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_312">312</a></td> - </tr> - - <tr> - <td class="tdr">XXV.</td> - <td class="tdl1"><span class="smcap">The Silver Queen</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_327">327</a></td> - </tr> - - <tr> - <td class="tdr">XXVI.</td> - <td class="tdl1"><span class="smcap">The Open Boat</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_342">342</a></td> - </tr> - - <tr> - <td class="tdr">XXVII.</td> - <td class="tdl1"><span class="smcap">The Island</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_351">351</a></td> - </tr> - - <tr> - <td class="tdr">XXVIII.</td> - <td class="tdl1"><span class="smcap">Four Years</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_362">362</a></td> - </tr> - - <tr> - <td class="tdr">XXIX.</td> - <td class="tdl1"><span class="smcap">The Spaniards</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_376">376</a></td> - </tr> - - <tr> - <td class="tdr">XXX.</td> - <td class="tdl1"><span class="smcap">The Islet</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_387">387</a></td> - </tr> - - <tr> - <td class="tdr">XXXI.</td> - <td class="tdl1"><span class="smcap">The Hour-Glass</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_404">404</a></td> - </tr> - - <tr> - <td class="tdr">XXXII.</td> - <td class="tdl1"><span class="smcap">A Journey</span></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_420">420</a></td> - </tr> - -</table> - - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[viii]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p class="pc4 xlarge">THE WITCH</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[ix]</a></span></p> -<p> </p> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p> - -<p class="pc4 xlarge"><b>THE WITCH</b></p> - -<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER I</h2> - -<p class="pch">THE QUEEN’S CHAMBER</p> - -<p class="pn1"><span class="smcap">It</span> was said that the Queen was dying. She lay -at Richmond, in the palace looking out upon the -wintry, wooded, March-shaken park, but London, a -few miles away, had daily news of how she did. -There was much talk about her—the old Queen—much -telling of stories and harking back. She had -had a long reign—“Not far from fifty years, my -masters!”—and in it many important things had -happened. The crowd in the streets, the barge and -wherry folk upon the wind-ruffled river, the roisterers -in the taverns drinking ale or sack, merchants -and citizens in general talking of the times in the -intervals of business, old soldiers and seamen ashore, -all manner of folk, indeed, agreed upon the one most -important thing. The most important thing had -been the scattering of the Armada fifteen years -before. That disposed of, opinions differed as to the -next most important. The old soldiers were for -all fighting wherever it had occurred. The seamen -and returned adventurers threw for the voyages of -Drake and Frobisher and Gilbert and Raleigh. With -these were inclined to agree the great merchants<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span> -and guild-masters who were venturing in the East -India and other joint-stock companies. The little -merchant and guild fellows agreed with the great. -A very large number of all classes claimed for the -overthrow of Popery the first place. On the other -hand, a considerable number either a little hurriedly -slurred this, or else somewhat too anxiously and -earnestly supported the assertion. One circle, all -churchmen, lauded the Act of Uniformity, and the -pains and penalties provided alike for Popish recusant -and non-conforming Protestant. Another circle, -men of a serious cast of countenance and of a -growing simplicity in dress, left the Act of Uniformity -in obscurity, and after the deliverance from the -Pope, made the important happening the support -given the Protestant principle in France and the -Netherlands. A few extreme loyalists put in a claim -for the number of conspiracies unearthed and trampled -into nothingness—Scottish conspiracies, Irish -conspiracies, Spanish conspiracies, Westmoreland -and Northumberland conspiracies, Throgmorton -conspiracies—the death of the Queen of Scots, the -death, two years ago, of Essex.</p> - -<p>All agreed that the Queen had had a stirring reign—all -but the latter end of it. The last few years—despite -Irish affairs—had been dull and settled, -a kind of ditch-water stagnation, a kind of going -downhill. Fifty years, almost, was a long time for -one person to reign....</p> - -<p>On a time the Queen had been an idol and a cynosure—for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span> -years the love of a people had been warm -about her. It had been a people struggling to become -a nation, beset with foreign foes and inner dissensions, -battling for a part in new worlds and -realms. She had led the people well, ruled well, come -out with them into the Promised Land. And now -there was a very human dissatisfaction with the Promised -Land, for the streams did not run milk and -honey nor were the sands golden. As humanly, the -dissatisfaction involved the old Queen. She could -not have been, after all, the Queen that they had -thought her.... After crying for so many years -“Long live Queen Elizabeth!” there would come -creeping into mind a desire for novelty. <i>King James,—King -James!</i> The words sounded well, and promised, -perhaps, the true Golden Age. But they were -said, of course, under breath. The Queen was not -dead yet.</p> - -<p>They told strange stories of her—the old Queen; -usually in small, select companies where there were -none but safe men. As March roared on, there was -more and more of this story-telling, straws that -showed the way the tide was setting. They were -rarely now stories of her youth, of her courage and -fire, of her learning, of the danger in which she lived -when she was only “Madam Elizabeth,” of her imprisonment -in the Tower—nor were they stories of -her coronation, and of the way, through so many -long years, she had queened it, of her “mere Englishness,” -her steady courage, her power of work, her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> -councillors, her wars, and her statecraft. Leaving -that plane, they were not so often either stories of -tragic errors, of wrath and jealousy, finesse and deception, -of arbitrary power, of the fret and weakness -of the strong.—But to-day they told stories of her -amours, real or pretended. They repeated what she -had said to Leicester and Leicester had said to her, -what she had said to Alençon and Alençon had -answered. They dug up again with a greasy mind -her girlhood relations with Seymour, they created -lovers for her and puffed every coquetry into a full-blown -<i>liaison</i>; here they made her this man’s mistress -and that man’s mistress, and there they said that she -could be no man’s mistress. They had stories to tell -of her even now, old and sick as she was. They told -how, this winter, for all she was so ill at ease, she -would be dressed each day in stiff and gorgeous -raiment, would lie upon her pillows so, with rings -upon her fingers and her face painted, and when -a young man entered the room, how she gathered -strength....</p> - -<p>The March wind roared down the streets and -shook the tavern signs.</p> - -<p>In the palace at Richmond, there was a great -room, and in the room there was a great bed. The -room had rich hangings, repeated about the bed. -The windows looked upon the wintry park, and -under a huge, marble mantelpiece, carved with tritons -and wreaths of flowers, a fire burned. About -the room were standing women—maids of honour,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> -tiring-women. Near the fire stood a group of men, -silent, in attendance.</p> - -<p>The Queen did not lie upon the bed—now she -said that she could not endure it, and now she said -that it was her will to lie upon the floor. They -placed rich cushions and she lay among them at their -feet, her gaunt frame stretched upon cloth of gold -and coloured silk. She had upon her a long, rich -gown, as full and rigid a thing as it was possible to -wear and yet recline. Her head was dressed with a -tire of false hair, a mass of red-gold; there was false -colour upon her cheek and lip. She kept a cup of -gold beside her filled with wine and water which at -long intervals she put to her lips. Now she lay for -hours very still, with contracted brows, and now she -turned from side to side, seeking ease and finding -none. Now there came a moan, and now a Tudor -oath. For the most part she lay still, only the fingers -of one hand moving upon the rim of the cup or measuring -the cloth of gold beneath her. Her sight was -failing. She had not eaten, would not eat. She lay -still, supported upon fringed cushions, and the fire -burned with a low sound, and the March wind shook -the windows.</p> - -<p>From the group of men by the fire stepped softly, -not her customary physician, but another of some -note, called into association during these last days. -He crossed the floor with a velvet step and stood -beside the Queen. His body bent itself into a curve -of deference, but his eyes searched without reverence.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> -She could not see him, he knew, with any -clearness. He was followed from the group by a -grave and able councillor. The two stood without -speaking, looking down. The Queen lay with closed -eyes. Her fingers continued to stroke the cloth of -gold; from her thin, drawn lips, coloured cherry-red, -came a halting murmur: “<i>England—Scotland—Ireland—</i>”</p> - -<p>The two men glanced at each other, then the -Queen’s councillor, stepping back to the fire, spoke -to a young man standing a little apart from the main -group. This man, too, crossed the floor with a noiseless -step and stood beside the physician. His eyes -likewise searched with a grave, professional interest.</p> - -<p>“<i>Navarre</i>,” went the low murmur at their feet. -“<i>Navarre and Orange.... No Pope, but I will have -ritual still.... England—Scotland—</i>”</p> - -<p>The Queen moaned and moved her body upon the -cushions. She opened her eyes. “Who’s standing -there? God’s death—!”</p> - -<p>The physician knelt. “Madam, it is your poor -physician. Will not Your Grace take the draught -now?”</p> - -<p>“No.—There’s some one else—”</p> - -<p>“Your Grace, it is a young physician—English—but -who has studied at Paris under the best -scholar of Ambroise Paré. He is learned and skilful. -He came commended by the Duke of —— to Sir -Robert Cecil—”</p> - -<p>“God’s wounds!” cried the Queen in a thin, imperious<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span> -voice. “Have I not told you and Cecil, too, -that there was no medicine and no doctor who could -do me good! Paré died, did he not? and you and -your fellow will die! All die. I have seen a many men -and matters die—and I will die, too, if it be my -will!”</p> - -<p>She stared past him at the strange physician. “If -he were Hippocrates himself I would not have him! -I do not like his looks. He is a dreamer and born to -be hanged.—Begone, both of you, and leave me at -peace.”</p> - -<p>Her eyes closed. She turned upon the cushions. -Her fingers began again to move upon the rich stuff -beneath her. “<i>England</i>—”</p> - -<p>The rejected aid or attempt to aid stepped, velvet-footed, -backward from the pallet. The physicians -knew, and all in the room knew, that the Queen -could not now really envisage a new face. She might -with equal knowledge have said of the man from -Paris, “He is a prince in disguise and born to be -crowned.” But though they knew this to be true, -the Queen had said the one thing and had not said -the other, and what she said had still great and -authoritative weight of suggestion. The younger -physician, returning to his place a little apart alike -from the women attendants and from the group of -courtiers, became the recipient of glances of predetermined -curiosity and misliking. Now, as it happened, -he really did have something the look of a -dreamer—thin, pale, and thoughtful-faced, with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> -musing, questioning eyes. While according to accepted -canons it was not handsome, while, indeed, -it was somewhat strange, mobile, and elf-like, his -countenance was in reality not at all unpleasing. It -showed kindliness no less than power to think. But -it was a face that was not usual.... He was fairly -young, tall and well-formed though exceedingly -spare, well dressed after the quiet and sober fashion -of his calling. Of their own accord, passing him -hastily in corridor or street, the people in the room -might not have given him a thought. But now they -saw that undoubtedly he <i>was</i> strange, perhaps even -sinister of aspect. Each wished to be as perspicacious -as the Queen.</p> - -<p>But they did not think much about it, and as the -newcomer, after a reverence directed toward the -Queen, presently withdrew with the older physician,—who -came gliding back without him,—and as he -was seen no more in the palace, they soon ceased to -think about him at all. He had been recommended -by a great French lord to the favour of Sir Robert -Cecil. The latter, sending for him within a day or -two, told him bluntly that he did not seem fitted for -the Court nor for Court promotion.</p> - -<p>The March wind roared through London and over -Merry England and around Richmond park and hill. -It shook the palace windows. Within, in the great -room with the great bed, the old Queen lay upon the -floor with pillows beneath her, with her brows drawn -together above her hawk nose. At intervals her mortal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> -disease and lack of all comfort wrung a moan, or -she gave one of her old, impatient, round, mouth-filling -oaths. For the most part she lay quite silent, -uneating, unsleeping, her fleshless fingers keeping -time against the rich cloth beneath her. Her women -did not love her as the women of Mary Stuart had -loved that Queen. Year in and year out, day in and -day out, they had feared this Queen; now she was -almost past fearing. They took no care to tell her -that the carmine upon her face was not right, or that -she had pushed the attire of hair to one side, and -that her own hair showed beneath and was grey. -They reasoned, perhaps with truth, that she might -strike the one who told. She lay in her rich garments -upon the floor, and the fire burned with a -low sound beneath the wreathed tritons and she -smoothed the gold cloth with her fingers. “<i>England—Scotland—Ireland.... -Mere English—... The -Pope down, but I’ll have the Bishops still—</i>”</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER II</h2> - -<p class="pch">THE CAP AND BELLS</p> - -<p class="pn1"><span class="smcap">The</span> inn was small and snug, near Cheapside Cross, -and resorted to by men of an argumentative mind. -The Mermaid Tavern, no great distance away, had -its poets and players, but the Cap and Bells was for -statesmen in their own thought alone, and for disputants -upon such trifles as the condition of Europe, -the Pope, and the change in the world wrought by -Doctor Martin Luther. It was ill-luck, certainly, -that brought Gilbert Aderhold to such a place.</p> - -<p>When he lost hope of any help from Cecil, the evident -first thing to do upon returning from Richmond -to London, was to change to lodgings that were less -dear,—indeed, to lodgings as little dear as possible. -His purse was running very low. He changed, with -promptitude, to a poor room in a poor house. It was -cold at night and dreary, and his eyes, tired with -reading through much of the day, ached in the one -candlelight. He went out into the dark and windy -street, saw the glow from the windows and open -door of the Cap and Bells, and trimmed his course -for the swinging sign, a draught of malmsey and -jovial human faces.</p> - -<p>In the tavern’s common room he found a seat -upon the long bench that ran around the wall. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> -was a desirable corner seat and it became his only by -virtue of its former occupant, a portly goldsmith, -being taken with a sudden dizziness, rising and -leaving the place. Aderhold, chancing to be standing -within three feet, slipped into the corner. He was -near the fire and it warmed him gratefully. A -drawer passing, he ordered the malmsey, and when -it was brought he rested the cup upon the table -before him. It was a long table, and toward the -farther end sat half a dozen men, drinking and talking. -What with firelight and candles the room was -bright enough. It was warm, and at the moment of -Aderhold’s entrance, peaceable. He thought of a -round of wild and noisy taverns that he had tried -one after the other, and, looking around him, experienced -a glow of self-congratulation. He wanted -peace, he wanted quiet; he had no love for the sudden -brawls, for the candles knocked out, and lives -of peaceable men in danger that characterized the -most of such resorts. He sipped his wine, and after -a few minutes of looking about and finding that the -cluster at the far end of the table was upon a discussion -of matters which did not interest him, he -drew from his breast the book he had been reading -and fell to it again. As he read always with a concentrated -attention, he was presently oblivious of all -around.</p> - -<p>An arm in a puffed sleeve of blue cloth slashed -with red, coming flat against the book and smothering -the page from sight, broke the spell and brought<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> -him back to the Cap and Bells. He raised his chin -from his hand and his eyes from the book—or -rather from the blue sleeve. The wearer of this, a -formidable, large man, an evident bully, with a captious -and rubicund face, frowned upon him from -the seat he had taken, at the foot of the table, just -by his corner. The number of drinkers and conversers -had greatly increased. There was not now just -a handful at this especial table; they were a dozen -or more. Moreover, he found that for some reason -their attention was upon him; they were watching -him; and he had a great and nervous dislike of -being watched. He became aware that there was a -good deal of noise, coarse jests and laughter, and -some disputing. Yet they looked, for the most part, -substantial men, not the wild Trojans and slashswords -that he sometimes encountered. For all his -physical trepidations he was a close and accurate -observer; roused now, he sent a couple of rapid -glances the length and breadth of the table. They -reported disputatious merchants and burgomasters, -a wine-flushed three or four from the neighbouring -congeries of lawyers, a country esquire, some one -who looked pompous and authoritative like a petty -magistrate, others less patent,—and the owner of -the arm still insolently stretched across his book.</p> - -<p>The latter now removed the arm. “So ho! Master -Scholar, your Condescension returns from the moon—after -we’ve halloaed ourselves hoarse! What -devil of a book carried you aloft like that?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span></p> - -<p>Aderhold decided to be as placating as possible. -“It is, sir, the ‘Chirurgia Magna’ of Theophrastus -Bombast von Hohenheim, called Paracelsus.”</p> - -<p>The red and blue man was determined to bully. -“The Cap and Bells has under consideration the -state of the Realm. The Cap and Bells has addressed -itself to you three times, requesting your -opinion upon grave matters. First you deign no -answer at all, and finally you insult us with trivialities! -’S death! are you an Englishman, sir?”</p> - -<p>“As English as you, sir,” answered Aderhold; -“though, in truth, seeing that I have lived abroad -some years and am but lately returned, my English -manners may have somewhat rusted and become -clownish. I crave pardon of the worshipful company, -and I shall not again read in its presence.”</p> - -<p>A roisterer addressed him from halfway down the -table. “We’ve got a ruling—we that frequent the -Cap and Bells. You’re a stranger—and a strange-looking -stranger, too, by your leave—and you -must wipe out the offense of your outlandishness! -A bowl of sack for the company—you’ll pay for a -bowl of sack for the company?”</p> - -<p>The colour flooded Aderhold’s thin cheek. He had -not enough in his purse or anything like enough. -To-morrow he expected—or hoped rather than expected—to -receive payment from the alderman -whose wife, having fallen ill before the very door -of the house where he lodged, he had attended and -brought out from the presence of death. But to-morrow<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> -was to-morrow, and to-night was to-night. -He told the truth. “I am a poor physician, my -masters, who hath of late been set about with misfortune—”</p> - -<p>The red and blue bully smote the table with his -fist.</p> - -<p>“What a murrain is a man doing in the Cap and -Bells who cannot pay for sack? Poor physician, -quotha! I’ve known a many physicians, but none so -poor as that—”</p> - -<p>One of the lawyers, a middle-aged, wiry man in -black, raised his head. “He says true. Come, -brother, out with thy gold and silver!”</p> - -<p>“When I shall have paid,” said Aderhold, “for the -malmsey I have drunk, I shall not have fourpence in -my purse.”</p> - -<p>“Pay for the sack,” said the lawyer, “and leave -the malmsey go.”</p> - -<p>“Nay,” said Aderhold, “I owe for the malmsey.”</p> - -<p>The red and blue man burst forth again. “Oons! -Would you have it that you do not owe the sack? -Call for the drink and a great bowl of it, aye! If the -host is out at the end, he can take his pay with a -cudgel or summon the watch! Physician, quotha? -Now, as my name’s Anthony Mull, he looks more to -me like a black seminary priest!”</p> - -<p>Aderhold leaned back appalled. He wished himself -in the windy street or the gloom of his lodgings, -or anywhere but here. Was it all to begin again, the -great weariness of trouble here and trouble there?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> -To thread and dodge and bend aside, only in the end -to find himself at bay, bright-eyed and fierce at last -like any hunted animal—he who wanted only peace -and quiet, calm space to think in! He groaned inwardly. -“Ah, the most unlucky star!” There came -to his help, somewhat strangely, and, though none -noticed it, upon the start as it were of the red and -blue bully’s closing words, the Inns of Court man -who had spoken before. He took his arms from the -table and, turning, called aloud, “William Host! -William Host!”</p> - -<p>The host came—a stout man with a moon face. -“Aye, sir? aye, Master Carnock?”</p> - -<p>“William Host,” said Carnock, “it is known, even -in that remnant of Bœotia, the Mermaid Tavern, -that thou ’rt the greatest lover of books of all the -Queen’s subjects—”</p> - -<p>The host assumed the look of the foolish-wise. -“Nay, nay, I would not say the greatest, Master -Carnock! But ’tis known that I value a book—”</p> - -<p>“Then,” said the other, “here is a learned doctor -with a no less learned book.” Rising, he leaned halfway -over the table and lifted from before Aderhold -the volume with which he had been engaged. “Lo! -A good-sized book and well made and clothed! Look -you, now! Is’t worth thy greatest bowl of sack, hot -and sugared? It is—I see it by thine eye of judicious -appraisement! I applaud thy judgement!—I -call it a Solomon’s judgement.—Furnish the doctor -with the sack and take the book for payment!”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span></p> - -<p>Aderhold thrust out a long and eager arm. “Nay, -sir! I value the book greatly—”</p> - -<p>“If you are not a fool—” said the lawyer with -asperity.</p> - -<p>But the physician had already drawn back his -arm. He could be at times what the world might -call a fool, but his intelligence agreed that this occasion -did not warrant folly. He might somehow come -up with the book again; if the alderman paid, he -might, indeed, come back to-morrow to the Cap and -Bells and recover it from the host. When the first -starting and shrinking from danger was over, he was -quick and subtle enough in moves of extrication. -He had learned that in his case, or soon or late, a -certain desperate coolness might be expected to appear. -Sometimes he found it at one corner, sometimes -at another; sometimes it only came after long -delay, after long agony and trembling; and sometimes -it slipped its hand into his immediately after -the first recoil. Whenever it came it brought, to his -great relief, an inner detachment, much as though -he were a spectator, very safe in some gallery above. -Up there, so safe and cool, he could even see the -humour in all things. Now he addressed the company. -“My masters, Cleopatra, when she would -have a costly drink, melted pearls in wine! The book -there may be called a jewel, for I prized it mightily. -Will you swallow it dissolved in sack? So I shall -make amends, and all will be wiser for having drunk -understanding!”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></p> - -<p>The idea appealed, the sack was ordered. But the -red and blue bully was bully still. Aderhold would -have sat quiet in his corner, awaiting the steaming -stuff and planning to slip away as soon as might be -after its coming. At the other end of the table had -arisen a wordy war over some current city matter or -other—so far as he was concerned the company -might seem to be placated and attention drawn. He -was conscious that the lawyer still watched him -from the corner of his eye, but the rest of the dozen -indulged in their own wiseacre wrangling. All, that -is, but the red and blue bully. He still stared and -swelled with animosity, and presently broke forth -again. “‘Physician’! It may be so, but I do not -believe it! As my name’s Anthony Mull, I believe -you to be a Jesuit spy—”</p> - -<p>The sack came at the moment and with it a diversion. -Cups were filled, all drank, and the lawyer -flung upon the board for discussion the growing use -of tobacco, its merits and demerits. Then, with -suddenness, the petty magistrate at the head of the -table was found to be relating the pillorying that -day, side by side, of a Popish recusant and a railing -Banbury man or Puritan. All at table turned out to -be strong Church of England men, zealous maintainers -of the Act of Uniformity, jealous of even a smack -of deviation toward Pope or Calvin. At the close of -a moment of suspension, while all drank again, the -red and blue bully, leaning forward, addressed the -man of justice. “Good Master Pierce, regard this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> -leech, so named, and put the question to him, will -he curse Popery and all its works.”</p> - -<p>It seemed, in truth, that this was Aderhold’s -unlucky night. That, or there was something in -the Queen’s declaration, there was something about -him different, something that provoked in all these -people antagonism. And yet he was a quiet man, of -a behaviour so careful that it suggested a shyness or -timidity beyond the ordinary. He was not ill-looking -or villainous-looking—but yet, there it was! -For all that he was indubitably of English birth, -“<i>Foreigner</i>” was written upon him.</p> - -<p>The present unluckiness was the being again -involved in this contentious and noisy hour. He had -been gathering himself together, meaning to rise -with the emptying of the bowl, make his bow to the -company, and quit the Cap and Bells. And now it -seemed that he must stop to assure them that he was -not of the old religion! Aderhold’s inner man might -have faintly smiled. He felt the lawyer’s gaze upon -him—a curious, even an apprehensive, gaze. The -justice put the question portentously, all the table, -save only the lawyer, leaning forward, gloating for -the answer, ready to dart a claw forward at the least -flinching. But Aderhold spoke soberly, with a quiet -brow. “I do not hold with cursing, Master Justice. -It is idle to curse past, present, or to come, for in all -three a man but curses himself. But I am far -removed from that faith, and that belief is become a -strange and hostile one to me. I am no Papist.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span></p> - -<p>The bully struck the table with his fist. “As my -name’s Anthony Mull, that’s not enough!”</p> - -<p>And the justice echoed him with an owl-like look: -“That’s not enough!”</p> - -<p>A colour came into Aderhold’s cheek. “There is, -my masters, no faith that has not in some manner -served the world and given voice to what we were -and are, good and bad. No faith without lives of -beauty and grace. No faith without its garland. But -since I am to clear myself of belonging to the old -religion—then I will say that I abhor—as in a -portion of myself, diseased, which I would have as -far otherwise as I might—that I abhor in that faith -all its cruelties past and present, its Inquisition, its -torturers and savage hate, its wars and blood-letting -and insensate strife, its falseness and cupidity and -great and unreasonable pride, its King Know-No-More -and its Queen Enquire-No-Further! I abhor -its leasing bulls, its anathemas and excommunications, -its iron portcullis dropped across the outward -and onward road, its hand upon the throat of knowledge -and its searing irons against the eyes of vision! -I say that it has made a dogma of the childhood of -the mind and that, or soon or late, there will stand -within its portals intellectual death—”</p> - -<p>The table blinked. “At least,” said the justice -sagely, “you are no Papist!”</p> - -<p>But the red and blue man would not be balked -of his prey. “That’s round enough, but little -enough as a true Churchman talks! You appear to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> -me not one whit less one of us than you did before! -Master Pierce, Master Pierce! if he be not a masked -Jesuit, then is he a Marprelate man, a Banbury -man, a snuffling, Puritan, holy brother! Examine -him, Master Pierce! My name is not Mull, if he be -not somehow pillory fruit—”</p> - -<p>It seemed that they all hated a Puritan as much -as a Papist. “Declare! Declare! Are you a Banbury -Saint and a Brother? Are you Reformed, a -Precisian, and a Presbyter? Are you John Calvin -and John Knox?”</p> - -<p>But Aderhold kept a quiet forehead. “A brother -to any in the sense you mean—no. A saint—not -I! A Calvinist?—No, I am no Calvinist.”</p> - -<p>“Not enough! Not enough!”</p> - -<p>Aderhold looked at them, bright-eyed. “Then I -will say that Calvin burned Servetus. I will say that -where they have had power to persecute they have -persecuted! I will say that—”</p> - -<p>Outside the Cap and Bells arose a great uproar. -Whether it were apprentices fighting, or an issue of -gentry and sword-play with—in either case—the -watch arriving, or whether it were a fire, or news, -perhaps, of the old Queen’s death—whatever it -was it behooved the Cap and Bells to know the -worst! All the revellers and disputers rose, made for -the door, became dispersed. Aderhold snatched up -his cloak and hat, laid a coin beside the empty -malmsey cup, sent one regretful glance in the direction -of the volume lying beside the great bowl, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> -quitted the Cap and Bells. In the street was a glare -of light and the noise of running feet. The crowd -appeared to be rushing toward Thames bank, some -tall building upon it being afire. He let them go, and -drawing his cloak about him, turned in the direction -of his lodging.</p> - -<p>He had not gone far when he felt himself touched -on the shoulder. “Not so fast! A word with you, -friend!—You’ve put me out of breath—”</p> - -<p>It proved to be the lawyer who had befriended -him. They were standing before some church. -Wall and porch, it rose above them, dark and vacant. -The lawyer looked about him, glanced along -the steps and into the hollow of the porch. “Bare -as is this land of grace!—Look you, friend, we -know that it is allowable at times to do that in danger -which we disavow in safety. Especially if we -have great things in trust.—I marked you quickly -enough for a man with a secret—and a secret more -of the soul and mind than of worldly goods. Hark -you! I’m as little as you one of the mass-denying -crew we’ve left. What! a man may go in troublous -times with the current and keep a still tongue—nay, -protest with his tongue that he loves the current—else -he’ll have a still tongue, indeed, and -neither lands nor business, nor perhaps bare life! -But when we recognize a friend—” He spoke -rapidly, in a voice hardly above a whisper, a sentence -or two further.</p> - -<p>“You take me,” said Aderhold, “to be Catholic.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> -You mistake; I am not. I spoke without mask.” -Then, as the other drew back with an angry breath. -“You were quick and kindly and saved me from that -which it would have been disagreeable to experience. -Will you let me say but another word?”</p> - -<p>“Say on,” said the other thickly, “but had I -known—”</p> - -<p>The light from Thames bank reddening the street -even here, they drew a little farther into the shadow -of the porch. “I have travelled much,” said Aderhold, -“and seen many men and beliefs, and most -often the beliefs were strange to me, and I saw not -how any could hold them. Yet were the people -much what they were themselves, some kindly, some -unkindly, some hateful, some filled with all helpfulness. -I have seen men of rare qualities, tender and -honourable women and young children, believe what -to me were monstrous things. Everywhere I have -seen that men and women may be better than the -dogma that is taught them, seeing that what they -think they believe is wrapped in all the rest of their -being which believes no such thing. Both in the old -religion and in the Reformed have I known many a -heroic and love-worthy soul. Think as well as you -may of me, brother, and I will think well of thee—and -thank thee, besides,—”</p> - -<p>“Cease your heretic talk!” said the lawyer. “I -held you to be of holy Mother Church—” With -suddenness, in the darkness, he put forth his foot -and swung his arm, at once tripping and striking the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> -physician with such violence that he came to the -ground with his forehead against the stone step of -the church. When he staggered to his feet the lawyer -was gone. Around him howled the March wind -and far above the church vane creaked. He stood for -a moment until the giddiness passed, then gathered -his cloak about him and, hurrying on through the -nipping air, reached his lodging without further -adventure.</p> - -<p>That night he slept well. The next morning, as he -was eating his breakfast, that was spare enough, he -heard a loud and formal crying in the street below. -He went to the window. A crier was approaching, at -his heels a mob of boys and of the idle generally. -“<i>The Queen is Dead!—The Queen is Dead!—The -Queen is Dead!—Long Live King James!</i>”</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER III</h2> - -<p class="pch">THE TWO PHYSICIANS</p> - -<p class="pn1"><span class="smcap">He</span> went that morning to visit the alderman, inopportune -as he knew the visit would be esteemed. -But many things were inopportune—hunger, for -instance. The alderman found the visit offensively, -unpatriotically inopportune. “What! The King’s -Majesty’s ascension day—!” But one thing saved -Aderhold, and that was the presence in the alderman’s -parlour of some seven or eight cronies, men -and women. It would not do—it would not do for -the alderman to seem haggling and unwilling. -Aderhold quitted the house the richer by twelve -shillings.</p> - -<p>The narrow streets were crowded; everybody was -out, excited and important as though he or she had -died or been crowned. The physician strolled with -the others. The morning was fine, he felt wealthy -and happy. The sunshine that stroked the projecting, -timbered fronts of houses was the sunshine of -home, the soft and moist light of England. He -loved England. He wandered for an hour or two -here and there in the London of less than two hundred -thousand souls. He went down to the riverside, -and sat upon a stone step, and gazed into the purple, -brooding distance.... At last he turned back, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> -after a time found himself in the street of his lodging, -and before the house.</p> - -<p>It was a narrow, poor, and gloomy place, owned -by people whom he guessed to have fallen on evil -days. The plainly dressed elderly woman from -whom he had hired his room had told him, indeed, -as much. “Aye?” said Aderhold. “Then, mother, -I’ll feel the more at home.” He had lodged here now -ten days and he had seen only the elderly woman -and her son, a boy far gone in consumption who -coughed and coughed. The woman was a silent, -rigid person, withered but erect, wearing a cap and -over her gown of dark stuff a coarse white kerchief -and apron. This morning, when she brought him his -half loaf and tankard of ale, he had spoken with -casualness of the Cap and Bells. She looked at him -strangely. “The Cap and Bells!... Doubtless you -heard good talk there.” Then had come the crying -about the Queen’s death. When he turned from the -window the woman was gone.</p> - -<p>Now he entered the house. As he laid his hand -upon the stair-rail the woman stood framed in a -doorway. “Tarry a little,” she said. “I wish to tell -you that this house will lodge you no longer.”</p> - -<p>Aderhold stood still, then turned. “And why, -good mother? I like my room and the house. I have -striven to be in no way troublesome.” He put his -hand in his purse and drew it forth with the alderman’s -shillings upon the palm. “You see I have -money. You’ll not lose by me.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p> - -<p>A voice came from the room behind the woman. -“Let him enter, mother. We would see this fellow -who will make no trouble for us.”</p> - -<p>Aderhold noted a pale triumph in the woman’s -strong, lined face and in her tense, updrawn figure. -“Aye, it happened to give thanks for!” she told him. -“Two things happened this morning. A King came -to the throne who, for all his mother’s scarlet and -raging sins, has himself been bred by godly men to -godly ways! And my two sons came home from -overseas!”</p> - -<p>She turned and passed through the doorway into -the room from which she had come. Aderhold, after -a moment of hesitation, followed. It was a large, -dark place, very cold and bare. Here, too, was a -table, drawn toward the middle of the room, with a -cloth upon it and bread and a piece of meat. Beside -it, chair and stool pushed back, stood two men—the -returned sons Aderhold was at once aware. He -had seen before men like these men—English sectaries -abroad, men who stood with the Huguenots in -France, and in the Low Countries fought Spain and -the Devil with the soldiers of Orange. Estranged or -banished from home, lonely and insular, fighting -upon what they esteemed the Lord’s side, in the -place where they esteemed the fight to be hottest, -they exhibited small, small love and comradeship for -those in whose cause they fought. Only, truly, in -conventicles, could they seem to warm to people of -another tongue and history. Ultra-zealous, more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> -Calvin than Calvin, trained to harshness in a frightful -war, iron, fanatic, back now they came to England, -the most admirable soldiers and the most -uncharitable men!</p> - -<p>The two stood in their plain doublets, their great -boots, their small falling collars. They were tall and -hard of aspect, the one bearded, the other with a -pale, clean-shaven, narrow, enthusiast’s face. The -home-keeping son also had risen from table. He -stood beside his mother, coughing and pressing a -cloth to his lips.</p> - -<p>The bearded man spoke. “Good-morrow, friend!”</p> - -<p>“Good-morrow, friend,” answered Aderhold.</p> - -<p>“You spoke that,” said the bearded man, “as -though you were indeed a friend, whereas we know -you to be but a Cap and Bells friend.”</p> - -<p>“I do not take your meaning,” said Aderhold. “I -would be friends—no man knows how I would be -friends with men.”</p> - -<p>The shaven man spoke. “Thou hypocritical prelate’s -man! Why did you let slip to my mother that -the Cap and Bells was your place of revelling and -roistering and blackening God to his face? As if, -before we went to the wars, the Cap and Bells was -not known for what it was—yea, and is! for my -mother saith the leopard hath not changed his spots -nor the Ethiop his skin—a bishop-loving, stained-glass -praising, Prayer-Book upholding, sacrament -kneeling, bowing, chanting, genuflecting, very pillar -and nest of prelacy! drinking-place of all they who,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> -if they had their wicked will, would give into the -hand of ruin—yea, would pillory and stock, yea, -would put to the rack if they might, yea, would give -to the flame if they were strong enough!—the Lord’s -chosen people, sole fence between this land and the -fate of the cities of the plain!”</p> - -<p>“There have been before now,” said the bearded -man, “spies sent among the Lord’s people, and -always such have been received and comforted in -that same house—to wit, the Cap and Bells!”</p> - -<p>The consumptive took the red cloth from his lips. -“Mother, mother, did I not say, when the man -came, that he had a strange look?”</p> - -<p>“Aye, Andrew,” said the mother, “he went like a -man with a guilty load and watched his shadow.—But -I had you to think on, and the need for bread, -and he paid me, which, God knoweth! they do not -always do. And it came not into my head, until, -before he thought, he had said the ‘Cap and Bells,’ -that he might be here to spy and wring news of us—cozening -us to tell reportable tales of the Lord’s -Saints!” She stopped, then spoke on with a high, -restrained passion and triumph. “But now—but -now I think that that is what he is! But now I am -not afraid—and now he may get his deserts—seeing -that the new King is surely for us, and that my -sons have come home!”</p> - -<p>“The new King!” exclaimed the shaven man. -“The new King is an old Stuart! Lean upon that -reed and it will pierce your hand! I tell that to my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> -brother and to you, mother, and you will not believe—”</p> - -<p>“Time will show,” said the bearded man impatiently. -“Time will show which of us is right. But -to-day my mother can turn out this bishop’s man, -neck and crop! Yea, and if he murmurs—”</p> - -<p>He made a step forward, a big-boned, powerful -man, grim of countenance. His hand shot out -toward the physician.</p> - -<p>Aderhold gave back a step, then recovered himself. -“You are mistaken,” he said. “I am no spy -and I am no bishop’s man. Like you, I have been -from England. I return poor and seeking physician’s -work. Desiring lodging, I asked at this house as I -had asked at others, and as honestly as a man may. -For the Cap and Bells, I knew naught of it nor of its -frequenters. I crossed its threshold but once, and so -ill did the place suit me that I am not like to go -again. I tell you the plain truth.”</p> - -<p>The woman and her sons regarded him fixedly. -“What think you,” asked the shaven man at last, -abruptly and sternly, “of the law that maketh it an -offense for a man to worship his Creator after the -dictates of his own heart—yea, that would compel -him to conform to practices which his soul abhorreth?”</p> - -<p>“I think,” said Aderhold, “that it is an evil -law.”</p> - -<p>“You say truth,” answered the shaven man. -“Now tell me plainly. Believe you in copes and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span> -stoles and altars and credence tables, in kneeling at -communion, in Prayer-Book and surplice and bowing -when the name is mentioned, in bishops and -archbishops and pride of place before God?”</p> - -<p>Aderhold looked at him dreamily. The fear of -physical injury, which was the weakness that most -beset him, was gone by. He had at times a strange -sense of expansion, accompanied by a differentiation -and deepening of light. The experience—he knew -it to be inward, and never steadfast, very fleeting—returned -to him now. The room looked world-wide, -the four interlocutors tribes and peoples. “My -mind does not dwell overmuch,” he said, “upon -matters such as these. They are little matters. The -wrong is that a man should be made to say they are -necessary and great matters, and, to avoid falseness, -be made to fight dwarfs as though they were giants.—I -need no priest in cope or surplice or especial -dress when all that I am lifts in contemplation and -resolve. I need not kneel when All communes with -All. No slave is my soul. Would I pray, I can pray -without book, and would I not, no book held before -my face hath power to pray for me. If I bowed my -head at each thought of the mystery that surrounds -us, I would not with overmuch frequency walk erect, -for I think much and constantly of that mystery. If -I bow my head without thought—an idiot may do -the same. As for prelates and they who are called -‘spiritual princes’—I have seen not one who is not -a man-chosen master of a man-built house.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span></p> - -<p>The woman spoke uncertainly. “If we have been -mistaken in you, sir,—”</p> - -<p>“What you say has truth,” said the bearded man. -“But it also has a strangeness and rings not like our -truth.... If you are a Brownist, this house will -have naught to do with you!”</p> - -<p>“I am not a Brownist,” said Aderhold wearily. -The sense of space widening off and intenser light -was gone. Never yet had it stayed but the fewest of -moments, and, going, it threw life back upon -itself....</p> - -<p>But the second son, who had been standing with -an abstracted and distant look, started and spoke. -“Let him alone, mother and my brother! Whatever -he be, he hath no ill-will nor guile—” He turned to -the table. “Are you hungry?” he asked. “Sit down -and eat with us.”</p> - -<p>Aderhold dwelt in this house some days longer. -He did not again see the two sons; they had taken -horse and ridden to visit some returned comrade -or officer in the country. The woman he saw, and -sometimes talked with, but she had ceased to be -curious about him, and they chiefly spoke of the -consumptive boy. He was near death. The physician -could only give something that should make -the nights pass more swiftly, less painfully.</p> - -<p>He himself wished to see a physician, the physician -to whom, as to Cecil, he had been recommended -by a great noble of France, but whom he had not seen -since that day in Richmond, after that hour in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> -Queen’s chamber. He had gone to his house to enquire—he -was yet out of London, he would be -home on such a day. Aderhold went then, but could -not see him; waited two days, and was again denied; -went in another three, and was admitted. The physician -was alone, in a small room, and his manner -dry and cold.</p> - -<p>If Aderhold still nursed a hope it was a faint and -failing one. Before that day in Richmond the hope -had been strong. This physician was a skilled man -and knew skill when he saw it—the great Frenchman -had written with a guarded enthusiasm, but yet -with enthusiasm of what Gilbert Aderhold might do—the -London physician had let drop a hint that -he himself had thought at times of an assistant—if -not that, he could certainly speak a word in season -in another quarter. Aderhold had hoped—after -Richmond he had hoped less strongly. Now he -found that hope was failing. What had happened? -What always happened?</p> - -<p>The physician continued standing. The room -opened upon a garden, and outside the lattice window -there showed a tender mist of budding tree and -shrub. “You were so good,” said Aderhold, “as to -bid me come to you upon your return.”</p> - -<p>“I wished,” said the physician, “to give all -weight and recognition to the commendation of the -Duke of ——.” A grey cat came and rubbed against -his ankle. He stooped and lifting the creature to the -table beside him stood stroking it. “The commendation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span> -of great noblemen is at times like their largesse. -It often falls—through, of course, no fault of -theirs—before the stranger and the unworthy.”</p> - -<p>“If I be unworthy,” said Aderhold, “yet I am not -strange to that nobleman, nor, I think, unloved by -him. He has been my good patron, almost, I might -dare to say, my friend.”</p> - -<p>“Aye?” said the physician. “It has come to -Court ears, with other French news, that the Duke -is out of favour.... Moreover, a friend of my own -has lately returned from Paris where he had long -resided. He is a man of the world, with a great -interest in life and a knowledge of what is talked -about, small things as well as great. He told me”—the -physician paused—“of <i>you</i>!”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” Aderhold said dully; “of me?”</p> - -<p>“He brought you in as a slight case, but typical, of -what grows up in the narrow strip between religious -wars and factions, between Leaguer and Huguenot—to -wit, something that is neither Catholic nor -Protestant, which the Leaguer would burn and the -Huguenot would flay! He told me of your case and -your trial and imprisonment, and how none would -help you, neither Papist nor Reformed, but only this -one nobleman whose child, it seems, you had healed, -and even he could only help by helping you forth -from France.” The physician continued to draw his -hand over the grey fur. “I quarrel with that nobleman -for considering that an atheist might prosper -here in England, and for deceivingly writing to me<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> -only of his skill in all that pertained to his art! I -might,” said the physician, “have become involved -in what discovery and disfavour you may bring upon -yourself in this realm!”</p> - -<p>“I am not,” said Aderhold, “an atheist. Sanction -and authority and restraint are within.”</p> - -<p>The other shrugged. “Oh, your fine distinctions!” -He went to the window and set it wider so that the -whole green garden and white and rosy branches of -bloom seemed to come into the room. “I am not,” -he said, with his back to the lattice, “myself a -theologian. By nature I am a ‘live and let live’ man. -Peter, Luther, Calvin, Mohammed, and Abraham -each may have had his own knowledge of heaven and -hell! I will not quarrel with knowledge for being -various. I am tolerant—I am tolerant, Master -Aderhold! But I hold with emphasis that you must -not inculpate others—no, you must not let the edge -of your mantle of heresy touch another! It were base -ingratitude, for instance, were you—”</p> - -<p>“I have been careful,” said Aderhold, “to mention -your name to no one. I have led since seeing -you a retired and soundless life. I am a stranger in -this city and none knows my life, nor feels an interest -in it.”</p> - -<p>The physician’s countenance showed relief. “I -did not know of what folly you might not have been -capable!” He stroked the cat, moved a few paces -about the room and returned. “I regret that I can -give you no aid. Indeed, I must tell you plainly that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span> -I owe it to my family and my patients and my place—which -is no slight one—in the esteem of this -city, to refuse all association with a man who at any -hour may fall under suspicion and prosecution.” -He paused. “I may say to you once, and this once -only, that I find your case a hard one. I certainly -advise you not to be stiff-necked, but living in the -world to conform to the world. Philosophize, if you -choose, but inwardly, inwardly, man!”</p> - -<p>He spoke quite amiably, even genially. It was -apparent that Aderhold had taken his dismissal, -that he was not going to beg or be distressful. He -considered through the open casement the height of -the sun. He could give the unfortunate man a -minute or two longer. “Let us speak a moment,” he -said, “of our art. London is thronged with doctors. -I tell you truly that there is scant room for another, -even were the circumstances not as they are, and -you were as like others as you are unlike. However -still a tongue you may keep,—and I think you may -betray yourself oftener than you think,—you will -eventually be found out.” He lifted his finger impressively. -“Now the temper of the time is religious -and growing ever more so. The Italian and antique -spirit that I remember is going—is almost gone. -We are all theologians and damn the whole world -outside of our particular ark. People of the old -faith, people of the established faith, people of the -Presbytery—each of the three detests and will -persecute the remaining two. Right and left suffer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> -from the middle, which is in power, as the middle—and -the remaining other—would suffer were the -right or left in power. War, secret or open, war, war! -and they only unite to plague a witch or to run to -earth and burn for heresy one like you who belongs -not to right nor left nor middle. The tolerant, -humane, philosophic heart dissents—but few, my -friend, are tolerant and humane, too few, too few! -All this being so, I do not advise you to remain in -London—no, I should not, were you Galen -himself!”</p> - -<p>Aderhold stood gazing at the garden without. -There were thorn hedges everywhere—across all -paths. “I do not know,” he said, “where I should -go—”</p> - -<p>“My advice,” said his fellow physician, “would -be to travel to some smaller town that hath never -received a whisper from France. And now”—he -rose—“and now I must bid you good-bye, for an -important personage expects me at this hour.”</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER IV</h2> - -<p class="pch">THE ROSE TAVERN</p> - -<p class="pn1"><span class="smcap">Three</span> days after this conversation Gilbert Aderhold -said good-bye to the Puritan woman and her -son, shouldered a stick with a bundle at the end, and -set his face toward the periphery of London and the -green country beyond. He had no money. The idea -of asking his fellow physician for a loan haunted him -through one night, but when morning came the -ghost was laid. He strongly doubted if the other -would make the loan and he did not wish to ask it -anyhow. Since he had been in London he had given -a cast of his art more than once or twice in this -neighbourhood. But it was a poor neighbourhood, -and those whom he had served had been piteous -folk, and he did not think that they could pay. He -had not asked them to pay. He had no connections -in London, no friends. His knowledge of men told -him that, for all his tolerance and humanity, the -fellow physician might be expected to drop a word -of warning, here and there, among the brotherhood. -His hope had been that his case was so obscure that -no talk would come from Paris.... It was not only -that the arm of religion had been raised; he had -invoked in medicine, too, strange gods of observation -and experience; he had been hounded forth<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> -with a double cry. To linger in London, to try to -work and earn here—with a shudder he tasted -beforehand the rebuff that might come. He would -leave London.</p> - -<p>He was without near kindred. His parents were -dead, a sister also. There was an elder brother, a -sea-captain. Aderhold had not seen him for years, -and fancied him now somewhere upon the ocean or -adventuring in the New World. He remembered -his mother telling him that there were or had -been cousins to the north. She had spoken of an -elderly man, living somewhere in a Grange. The -name was Hardwick, not Aderhold.... He had no -defined idea or intention of seeking kinsmen, but -eventually he turned his face toward the north.</p> - -<p>It was six in the morning when he stepped forth. -Slung beside his bundle of clothing and a book or -two, wrapped in a clean cloth, was a great loaf of -bread which the Puritan woman had given him. -There was a divine, bright sweetness and freshness -in the air and the pale-blue heaven over all. He -turned into Fleet Street and walked westward. -The apprentices were opening the shops, country -wares were coming into town, the city was beginning -to bustle. Aderhold walked, looking to right and -left, interested in all. He was not a very young -man, but he was young. Health and strength had -been rudely shaken by anxiety, fear, and misery. -Anxiety still hovered, and now and then a swift, upstarting -fear cut him like a whip and left him quivering.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> -But fear and anxiety were going further, -weakening, toning down. Calm was returning, calm -and rainbow lights.</p> - -<p>Hereabouts in the street were all manner of small -shops, places of entertainment, devices by which to -catch money. The apprentices were beginning their -monotonous crying, “What d’ye lack? What d’ye -lack?”</p> - -<p>He came to a booth where there was a raree show. -A shock-headed, ragged youth was taking down -the boards, which were painted with figures of Indians, -copper-hued and feathered. Half a dozen -children stood watching.</p> - -<p>Aderhold stopped and watched also. “Have you -an Indian here,” he asked the boy. “I have never -seen one.”</p> - -<p>The youth nodded. “He sleeps in the corner back -of the curtain. You pay twopence to see him—” -He grinned, and looked at the children. “But it’s -before hours, and if so be you won’t tell master on -me—”</p> - -<p>“We won’t, master, we won’t!” chorused the -children.</p> - -<p>The boy took down the last board, showing a -concave much like a den with a black curtain at the -back. He whistled and the curtain stirred. “We -got him,” said the boy, “from two Spaniards who -got him from a ship from Florida. They trained him. -They had a bear, too, that we bought, but the bear -died.” He whistled again. The curtain parted and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> -the Indian came forth and sat upon a stool planted -in the middle of the den.</p> - -<p>It was evident that he had been “trained.” -Almost naked, gaunt, dull and hopeless, he sat with -a lack-lustre eye. The boy whistled again and he -spoke, a guttural and lifeless string of words. The -children gathered close, flushed and excited. But -Aderhold’s brows drew upward and together and -he turned a little sick. He was a physician; he was -used to seeing wretchedness, but it had not deadened -him. Every now and then the wave of human -misery came and went over him, high as space, ineffably -dreary, unutterably hopeless.... He stood -and looked at the Indian for a few moments, then, -facing from the booth, walked away with a rapid -and disturbed step which gradually became slower -and halted. He turned and went back. “Has he eaten -this morning? You don’t give him much to eat?”</p> - -<p>“Times are hard,” said the boy.</p> - -<p>Aderhold took the smaller bundle from his stick, -unwrapped it and with his knife cut from the loaf a -third of its mass. “May I give him this?”</p> - -<p>The boy stared. “If you choose, master.”</p> - -<p>The physician entered the booth, went up to the -Indian and placed the bread upon his knee. “Woe -are we,” he said, “that can give no efficient help!”</p> - -<p>The savage and the European looked each other -in the eyes. For a moment something hawk-like, -eagle-like, came back and glanced through the pupils -of the red man, then it sank and fled. His eyes grew<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> -dull again, though he made a guttural sound and his -hand closed upon the bread. The physician stood a -moment longer. He had strongly the sacred wonder -and curiosity, the mother of knowledge, and he had -truly been interested to behold an Indian. Now he -beheld one—but the iron showed more than the -soul. “I am sorry for thee, my brother,” Aderhold -said softly.</p> - -<p>The boy spoke from without. “Hist, hist! Master’s -coming down the street.”</p> - -<p>Aderhold left the booth, shouldered his stick and -bundle and went on his way.</p> - -<p>He walked steadily, the sun at his back, lifting -through the mist and at last gilding the whole city. -He was now upon its northwestern fringe, in the -“suburbs.” They had an evil name, and he was -willing to pass through them hurriedly. They had a -sinister look,—net-work of foul lanes, low, wooden, -squinting houses, base taverns that leered.</p> - -<p>A woman came and walked beside him, paint on -her cheeks.</p> - -<p>“Where are you going, my bonny man?” Then, -as he would have outstepped her, “What haste? -Lord! what haste?”</p> - -<p>“I have a long way to go,” said Aderhold.</p> - -<p>“As long and as short as I have to go,” said the -woman. “If you are willing we might go together.”</p> - -<p>Aderhold walked on, “I am not for that gear, -mistress.”</p> - -<p>“No?” said the woman. “Then for what gear are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> -you?... Perhaps I am not for it, either, but—Lord -God! one must eat!” She began to sing in a -cracked voice but vaguely sweet.</p> - -<p class="pp6q p1">“A lass there dwelled in London town—</p> -<p class="pp7">‘Alas!’ she said, ‘Alas!’ she said,</p> -<p class="pp8s">‘Of gold and land</p> -<p class="pp8">I’ve none in hand—’”</p> - -<p class="p1">They were coming flush with the opening of a -small, dim courtyard. She broke off her song. -“Bring your stick and bundle in front of you! This -is a marked place for snatchers.”</p> - -<p>Her warning was not idle. As he shifted the stick -a shaggy, bull-headed man made a move from -shadow to sunlight, lurched against him and grasped -at the bundle. Aderhold slipping aside, the fellow -lost his balance and came almost to the ground. The -woman laughed. Enraged, the bull-headed man -drew a knife and made at the physician, but the -woman, coming swiftly under his raised arm, turned, -and grasping wrist and hand, gave so sudden a -wrench that the knife clanked down upon the -stones. She kicked it aside into the gutter, her -face turned to Aderhold. “Be off, my bonny man!” -she advised. “No, he’ll not hurt me! We’re old -friends.”</p> - -<p>Aderhold left the suburbs behind, left London -behind. He was on an old road, leading north. For -the most part, during the next few days, he kept to -this road, though sometimes he took roughly paralleling, -less-frequented ways, and sometimes footpaths<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> -through fields and woods. Now he walked briskly, -enjoying the air, hopeful with the hopeful day. -Sometime in the morning an empty cart overtook -him, the carter walking by his horse. They walked -together up a hill and talked of the earth and the -planting and the carting of stuffs and the rates paid -and the ways of horses. Level ground reached, the -carter offered a lift, and the two travelled some miles -together, chiefly in a friendly silence. At midday -Aderhold unwrapped his loaf of bread, and the carter -produced bread, too, and a bit of cheese and a -jug containing ale. They ate and drank, jogging -along by April hedges and budding trees. A little -later the carter must turn aside to some farm, and, -wishing each other well, they parted.</p> - -<p>This day and the next Aderhold walked, by green -country and Tudor village and town, by smithy and -mill, by country houses set deep in giant trees, by -hamlet and tavern, along stretches of lonely road -and through whispering, yet unvanished forests. -The sun shone, the birds sang, the air was a ripple of -zephyrs. The road had its traffic, ran an unwinding -ribbon of spectacle. There were the walls of country -and the roof of sky and a staccato presence of brute -and human life. Now horsemen went by—knightly -travel or merchant travel, or a judge or lawyer, or -a high ecclesiastic. Serving-men walked or rode, -farming folk, a nondescript of trade or leisure. -Drovers came by with cattle, country wains, dogs. -A pedlar with his pack kept him company for a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> -while. Country women passed, carrying butter and -eggs to market, children coming from school, three -young girls, lithe, with linked arms, a parson and his -clerk, an old seaman, a beggar, a charcoal-burner, a -curious small troupe of mummers and mountebanks, -and for contrast three or four mounted men somewhat -of the stripe of the widow’s sons. One looked -a country gentleman and another a minister of the -stricter sort. They gazed austerely at the mummers -as they passed. Now life flowed in quantity upon the -road, now the stream dwindled, now for long distances -there was but the life of the dust, tree and -plant, and the air.</p> - -<p>When the second sunset came he was between -hedged fields in a quiet, solitary country of tall trees, -with swallows circling overhead in a sky all golden -like the halos around saints’ heads in pictures that -he remembered in Italy. No house was visible, nor, -had one been so, had he made up his mind to ask the -night’s lodging. The day had been warm, even the -light airs had sunk away, the twilight was balm and -stillness. He possessed a good cloak, wide and warm. -With the fading of the gold from the sky he turned -aside from the road upon which, up and down as far -as he could see, nothing now moved, broke through -the hedge, found an angle and spread his cloak -within its two walls of shelter. The cloak was wide -enough to lie upon and cover with, his bundle made -a pillow. The stars came out; in some neighbouring, -marshy place the frogs began their choiring.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span></p> - -<p>Although he was tired enough, he could not sleep -at once, nor even after a moderate time of lying -there, in his ears the monotonous, not unmusical -sound. He thought of what he should do to-morrow, -and he could not tell. Walk on? Yes. How far, and -where should he stop? So far he had not begged, but -that could not last. The colour came into his cheek. -He did not wish to beg. And were there no pride in -the matter, there was the law of the land. Beggars -and vagabonds and masterless men, how hardly -were they dealt with! They were dealt with savagely, -and few asked what was the reason or where -was the fault. <i>Work.</i> Yes, he would work, but how -and where? Dimly he had thought all along of stopping -at last in some town or village, of some merciful -opportunity floating to him, of tarrying, staying -there—finding room somewhere—his skill shown—some -accident, perhaps, some case like the alderman’s -wife ... a foothold, a place to grip with the -hand, then little by little to build up. Quiet work, -good work, people to trust him, assurance, a cranny -of peace at last ... and all the time the light growing. -But where was the cranny, and how would he -find the way to it?</p> - -<p>Over him shone the Sickle. He lay and wondered, -and at last he slept, with the Serpent rising in the east.</p> - -<p>Late in the night, waking for a moment, he saw -that the sky was overcast. The air, too, was colder. -He wrapped the cloak more closely about him and -slept again. When he woke the day was here, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> -not such a day as yesterday. The clouds hung grey -and threatening, the wind blew chill. There set in a -day of weariness and crosses. It passed somehow. -Footsore, at dusk, he knocked at a cotter’s door, -closed fast against the wind which was high. When -the family questioned him, he told them that he was -a poor physician, come from overseas, going toward -kinspeople. There chanced to be a sick child in the -cottage; they let him stay for reading her fever and -telling them what to do.</p> - -<p>The next day and the next and the next the sky -was greyer yet, and the wind still blew. It carried -with it flakes of snow. The road stretched bare, -none fared abroad who could stay indoors. Aderhold -now stumbled as he walked. There was a humming -in his ears. In the early afternoon of his sixth day -from London he came to as lonely a strip of country -as he had seen, lonely and grey and furrowed and -planted with a gnarled wood. The flakes were coming -down thickly.</p> - -<p>Then, suddenly, beyond a turn of the road, he -saw a small inn, set in a courtyard among trees. As -he came nearer he could tell the sign—a red rose on -a black ground. It was a low-built house with a -thatched roof, and firelight glowed through the -window. The physician had a bleeding foot; he -was cold, cold, and dizzy with fatigue. He had no -money, and the inn did not look charitable. In the -last town he had passed through he had bought food -and the night’s lodging with a portion of the contents<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> -of his bundle. Now he sat down upon the root -of a tree overhanging the road, opened his shrunken -store, and considered that with most of what was -left he might perhaps purchase lodging and fare -until the sky cleared and his strength came back. A -while before he had passed one on the road who told -him that some miles ahead was a fairly large town. -He might press on to that ... but he was tired, horribly -tired, and shivering with the cold. In the end, -keeping the bundle in his hand, he went and knocked -at the door of the Rose Tavern.</p> - -<p>The blowsed servant wench who answered finally -brought her master the host, a smooth, glib man -with a watery eye. He looked at the stuff Aderhold -offered in payment and looked at the balance of the -bundle. In the end, he gestured Aderhold into the -house. It was warm within and fairly clean with a -brightness of scrubbed pannikins, and in the kitchen, -opening from the chief room, a vision of flitches of -bacon and strings of onions hanging from the rafters. -Besides the serving-maid and a serving-man there -was the hostess, a giant of a woman with a red kerchief -about her head. She gave Aderhold food. -When it was eaten he stretched himself upon the -settle by the kitchen hearth, arms beneath his head. -The firelight danced on the walls, there was warmth -and rest....</p> - -<p>Aderhold lay and slept. Hours passed. Then, as -the day drew toward evening, he half roused, but lay -still upon the settle, in the brown warmth. There<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> -was a feeling about him of peace and deep forests, -of lapping waves, of stars that rose and travelled to -their meridians and sank, of long, slow movements -of the mind. The minutes passed. He started full -awake with the hearing of horses trampling into the -courtyard and a babel of voices. He sat up, and the -serving-wench coming at the moment into the kitchen -he asked her a question. She proved a garrulous -soul who told all she knew. The Rose Tavern stood -some miles from a good-sized town. Those in the yard -and entering the house were several well-to-do merchants -and others with their serving-men. They had -been to London, travelling together for company, and -were now returning to this town. There was with -them Master—she couldn’t think of his name—of -Sack Hall in the next county. And coming in at the -same time, and from London, too, there was old -Master Hardwick who lived the other side of Hawthorn -village, in a ruined old house, and was a miser. -If <i>he</i> had been to London it would be sure to have been -about money. And finally there was Squire Carthew’s -brother, also from Hawthorn way. He was a fine -young man, but very strict and religious. The company -wasn’t going to stay—it wished food and hot -drink and to go on, wanting to reach the town before -night. And here the hostess descended upon the girl -and rated her fiercely for an idle, loose-tongue gabbling -wench—</p> - -<p>Aderhold, rested, rose from the settle and went -into the greater room. Here were the seven or eight<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> -principal travellers—the serving-men being without, -busy with the riding and sumpter horses. All in -the room were cold, demanding warmth and drink,—peremptory, -authoritative, well-to-do burghers -of a town too large for village manners and not large -enough for a wide urbanity. In a corner, on a bed -made of a bench and stool, with a furred mantle for -cover, lay a lean old man with a grey beard. He was -breathing thick and hard, and now and again he -gave a deep groan. A young serving-man stood -beside him, but with a dull and helpless aspect -toward sickness. Across the room, standing by a -window, appeared a man of a type unlike the others -in the room. Tall and well-made, he had a handsome -face, but with a strange expression as of warring -elements. There showed a suppressed passionateness, -and there showed a growing austerity. His -dress was good, but dark and plain. He was booted -and cloaked, and his hat which he kept upon his -head was plain and wide-brimmed. Aderhold, -glancing toward him, saw, he thought, one of the -lesser gentry, with strong Puritan leanings. This -would be “Squire Carthew’s brother.”</p> - -<p>As he looked, the serving-man left the greybeard -stretched upon the bench, went across to the window, -and, cap in hand, spoke a few words. The man -addressed listened, then strode over to the chimney-corner -and stood towering above the sick man. -“Are you so ill, Master Hardwick? Bear up, until -you can reach the town and a leech!”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span></p> - -<p>Aderhold, who had not left the doorway, moved -farther into the room. Full in the middle of it, a man -who had had his back to him swung around. He -encountered one whom he had encountered before—to -wit, the red and blue bully of the Cap and Bells. -Master Anthony Mull did not at first recognize him. -He was blustering against the host of the Rose -because there was no pasty in the house. The physician -would fain have slipped past, but the other -suddenly gave a start and put out a pouncing hand. -“Ha, I know you! You’re the black sorcerer and -devil’s friend at the Cap and Bells who turned a -book into a bowl of sack!”</p> - -<p>He had a great hectoring voice. The travellers in -the room, all except the group in the corner, turned -their heads and stared. Aderhold, attempting to -pass, made a gesture of denial and repulsion. “Ha! -Look at him!” cried Master Anthony Mull. “He -makes astrologer’s signs—warlock’s signs! Look if -he doesn’t bring a fiend’s own storm upon us ere we -get to town!”</p> - -<p>Very quiet, kindly, not easily angered, Aderhold -could feel white wrath rise within him. He felt it -now—felt a hatred of the red and blue man. The -most of those in the room were listening. It came -to him with bitterness that this bully and liar with -his handful of idle words might be making it difficult -for him to tarry, to fall into place if any place invited, -in the town ahead. He had had some such idea. -They said it was a fair town, with some learning....</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span></p> - -<p>He clenched his hands and pressed his lips together. -To answer in words was alike futile and -dangerous; instead, with a shake of the head, he -pushed by the red and blue man. The other might -have followed and continued the baiting, but some -further and unexpected dilatoriness exhibited by the -Rose Tavern fanned his temper into conflagration. -He joined the more peppery of the merchants in a -general denouncement and prophecy of midnight ere -they reached the town. Aderhold, as far from him -as he could get, put under the surge of anger and -alarm. He stood debating within himself the propriety -of leaving the inn at once, before Master Mull -could make further mischief. The cold twilight -and the empty road without were to be preferred to -accusations, in this age, of any difference in plane.</p> - -<p>The sick man near him gave a deep groan, struggled -to a sitting posture, then fell to one side in a fit -or swoon, his head striking against the wall. The -young serving-man uttered an exclamation of distress -and helplessness. The man with the plain hat, -who had turned away, wheeled and came back with -knitted brows. There was some commotion in the -room among those who had noticed the matter, but -yet no great amount. The old man seemed unknown -to some and to others known unfavourably.</p> - -<p>Aderhold crossed to the bench and bending over -the sufferer proceeded to loosen his ruff and shirt. -“Give him air,” he said, and then to the tall man, -“I am a physician.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span></p> - -<p>They laid Master Hardwick upon a bed in an -inner room, where, Aderhold doing for him what he -might, he presently revived. He stared about him. -“Where am I? Am I at the Oak Grange? I thought -I was on the road from London. Where is Will, my -man?”</p> - -<p>“He is without,” said Aderhold. “Do you want -him? I am a physician.”</p> - -<p>Master Hardwick lay and stared at him. “No, -no! You are a leech? Stay with me.... Am I going -to die?”</p> - -<p>“No. But you do not well to travel too far abroad -nor to place yourself where you will meet great -fatigues.”</p> - -<p>The other groaned. “It was this one only time. I -had monies at stake and none to straighten matters -out but myself.” He lay for a time with closed eyes, -then opened them again upon Aderhold. “I must -get on—I must get home—I must get at least as -far as the town to-night. Don’t you think that I -can travel?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, if you go carefully,” said Aderhold. “I will -tell your man what to do—”</p> - -<p>The old man groaned. “He works well at what he -knows, but he knows so little.... I do not know if I -will get home alive.”</p> - -<p>“How far beyond the town have you to go?”</p> - -<p>“Eight miles and more.... Doctor, are you not -travelling, too? You’ve done me good—and if I -were taken again—” He groaned. “I’m a poor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> -man,—they make a great mistake when they say -I’m rich,—but if you’ll ride with me I’ll pay -somehow—”</p> - -<p>Aderhold sat in silence, revolving the matter in -his mind. “I have,” he said at last, “no horse.”</p> - -<p>But Master Hardwick had with him a sumpter -horse. “Will can now ride that and now walk. You -may have Will’s horse.” He saw the long miles, -cold and dark, before him and grew eager. “I’m a -sick man and I must get home.” He raised himself -upon the bed. “You go with me—you’ve got a -kindly look—you do not seem strange to me. -What is your name?”</p> - -<p>“My name is Gilbert Aderhold.”</p> - -<p>“Aderhold!” said Master Hardwick. “My mother’s -mother was an Aderhold.”</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER V</h2> - -<p class="pch">THE ROAD TO HAWTHORN</p> - -<p class="pn1"><span class="smcap">It</span> was full dusk when the London travellers did at -last win away from the Rose Tavern. The evening -was cold, the snow yet falling in slow, infrequent -flakes. The merchants and their men, together with -Master Anthony Mull, first took the road. Then -followed Master Harry Carthew, straight and stern, -upon a great roan mare. In the rear came on slowly -old John Hardwick, his servant Will, and the physician -Gilbert Aderhold. These three soon lost sight -of the others, who, pushing on, came to the town, -rest, and bed, ere they had made half the distance.</p> - -<p>At last, very late, the place loomed before them. -They passed through dark and winding streets, and -found an inn which Master Hardwick knew. Together -Will and Aderhold lifted the old man from his -horse and helped him into the house and into a great -bed, where he lay groaning through the night, the -physician beside him speaking now and again a -soothing and steadying word.</p> - -<p>He could not travel the next day or the next. -Finally Aderhold and Will wrung permission to hire -a litter and two mules. On the third morning they -placed Master Hardwick in the litter and all took the -street leading to the road which should bring them<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> -in the afternoon to the Oak Grange. Going, they -passed a second inn, and here Master Harry Carthew -suddenly appeared beside them upon his great -roan. It seemed that affairs had kept him likewise -in this town, but that now he was bound in their -direction.</p> - -<p>The snow had passed into rain. The weather had -moderated, the rain ceased, and this morning there -was pure blue sky and divine sunlight. The latter -bathed the unpaved streets, the timbered, projecting -fronts of houses, guildhall and shops and marketplace, -and the tower and body of a great and ancient -abbey church. Beyond the church the ground -sloped steeply to the river winding by beneath an -arched bridge of stone. Above the town, commanding -all, rose a castle, half-ruinous, half in repair. The -streets were filled with people, cheerful in the morning -air. Litter, mules, and horsemen moved slowly -along. Honest Will drew a long breath. “Fegs! Who -would live in the country that could live in a town?”</p> - -<p>Aderhold was riding beside him, Carthew being -ahead on his great roan mare. “Tell me something,” -said the physician, “of the country to which we are -going.”</p> - -<p>“The country’s a good country enough,” said -Will. “But the Oak Grange—Lord! the Grange is -doleful and lonely—”</p> - -<p>“Doleful and lonely?”</p> - -<p>“It’s all buried in black trees,” said Will, “and -nobody lives there but our old master.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Where does Master Carthew live?”</p> - -<p>“He lives in the squire’s house beyond the village. -He’s the squire’s brother.”</p> - -<p>“You’re near a village?”</p> - -<p>“Aye, the village of Hawthorn.”</p> - -<p>They rode on, Will gazing busily about him. They -were still in the town, indeed in an important part -of it, for before them rose the prison. Without it -stood pillory and stocks, two men by the legs in the -latter, a dozen children deliberately pelting them -with rotten vegetables, shards, and mud. Aderhold -stared with a frown, the countryman with a curious -mixture of interest in the event and lumpish indifference -as to the nature of it. “Aye,” he repeated, -“the village of Hawthorn.”</p> - -<p>“Is there,” asked Aderhold, “a physician in the -village?”</p> - -<p>They had passed the prison, and were approaching -the sculptured portal of the great church. “A -physician?” said Will. “No. There was one, but he -died two years ago. Now they send here, or the -schoolmaster will bleed at a pinch or give a drench. -And sometimes they go—but the parson would -stop that—to old Mother Spuraway.”</p> - -<p>They were now full before the great portal of the -church. Carthew, ahead, stopped his horse to speak -to some person who seemed an acquaintance. His -halting in the narrow way halted the mules with the -litter. Master Hardwick had fallen into a doze. The -physician and serving-man, standing their horses<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> -together, looked up at the huge pile of the church, -towering like a cliff immediately above them. On -each side of the vast arched doorway had stood in -niches the figures of saints. These were broken and -gone—dragged down in the day when the neighbouring -abbey was closed. But around and about, -overhead and flanking the cavernous entrance, -had been left certain carvings—a train of them—imps -and devils and woe-begone folk possessed by -the foul fiend. The fiend grinned over the shoulder -of one like a monkey, he tugged like a wolf at the ear -of another, he crept like a mouse from a woman’s -mouth.... Aderhold’s gaze was upon the great -tower against the sky and the rose-window out -of which the stained glass was not yet broken. But -Will looked lower. Something presently causing the -physician to glance his way, he was startled at the -serving-man’s posture and expression. It was as -though he had never seen these stone figures before—and, -indeed, it proved that he had never been -so closely within the porch, and that, in short, they -had never so caught his attention. He was staring at -them now as though his eyeballs and all imagination -behind them were fastened by invisible wires to the -grotesque and horrible carvings. Into his countenance -came a creeping terror and a kind of fearful -exaltation. Aderhold knew the look—he had seen -it before, in France and elsewhere, upon peasant -faces and upon faces that were not those of peasants. -It was not an unusual look in his century. Again,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> -for the millionth time, imagination had been seized -and concentrated upon the Satanic and was creating -a universe to command. Will shivered, then he put -his hand to his ear.</p> - -<p>“There is nothing there,” said the physician, -“but your ear itself.”</p> - -<p>“Mice never come out of men’s mouths,” said -Will. The physician knew the voice, too, the dry-throated, -rigid-tongued monotone. “The comfort -is that most of the wicked are women.”</p> - -<p>“Then take comfort,” said Aderhold, “and come -away. Those figures are but the imagination of men -like yourself.”</p> - -<p>But Will was not ready to budge. “Twelfth night, -I was going through the fields. They were white -with snow. Something black ran across and howled -and snapped at me.”</p> - -<p>“A famished wolf,” said Aderhold.</p> - -<p>“Aye, it looked like a wolf. But this is what -proved it wasn’t,” said Will. “That night in Hawthorn -Forest Jock the forester set a trap. In the -night-time he heard it click down on the wolf and the -wolf howl. He said, says he, ‘I’ve got you now, old -demon!’ and went back to sleep. But at dawn, -when he went to the trap, there was blood there and -a tuft of grizzled hair, but nothing else. And so he -and his son followed red spots on the snow—right -through the forest and across Town Road. And on -the other side of the road, where the hedge comes -down, they lost it clean—not a drop of blood nor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> -the mark of a paw on the snow. But the dog they -had he ran about, and at last he lifted his head and -bayed, and then he started—And where, sir, do you -think he led them? He led them to the hut of old -Marget Primrose between Black Hill and Hawthorn -Brook. And Marget was lying huddled, crying with -a bloody cut across her ankle. And they matched -the hair from the trap with the hair under her cap.”</p> - -<p>“They did not match with care,” said Aderhold. -“And there are many ways by which a foot may be -hurt.”</p> - -<p>“Nay,” said the serving-man, “but when they -brought the trap and thrust her leg in it the marks -fitted.” He continued to stare at the stone wolf -tearing the ear. “That’s been four years, and never -since have I been able to abide the sight of a wolf!... -Witches and warlocks and wizards and what -they call incubi and succubi and all the demons and -fiends of hell, and Satan above saying, ‘Hist! this -one!’ and ‘Hist! that one!’ and your soul lost and -dragged to hell where you will burn in brimstone, -shrieking, and God and the angels mocking you and -crying, ‘Burn! Burn forever!’—Nay, an if they do -not get your soul, still they ravage and ruin what -you have on earth—blast the fields and dry the -streams, slay cow and sheep and horse, burn your -cot and wither your strength of a man.... Thicker -than May flies in the air—all the time close around -you, whether you see them or you don’t see them—monkeys -and wolves and bat wings flapping....<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> -Once something came on my breast at night—Satan, -Satan avaunt!”</p> - -<p>Aderhold leaned across, seized the bridle of the -other’s horse, and forcibly turned Will from further -contemplation of the sculptured portal. “Come -away, or you will fall down in a fit!”</p> - -<p>Carthew ahead was in motion, the mules with the -litter following. Will rode for a few paces with a -dazed look which was gradually replaced by his -usual aspect. The red came back into his cheeks, the -spring into his figure. By the time they had reached -the bridge he was ready for something palely resembling -a disinterested discussion of the supernatural.</p> - -<p>“Isn’t it true, sir, that witch or warlock, however -they’ve been roaming, must take their own -shape when they cross running water?”</p> - -<p>“Whatever shape matter takes is its own shape,” -said the physician, “and would be though we saw it -in a thousand shapes, one after the other. I have -never seen, nor expect to see, a witch or warlock.”</p> - -<p>“Why, where have you travelled, sir?” asked the -yeoman bluntly; then, without waiting for an answer, -“They’re hatching thick and thicker in England, -though not so thick as they are in Scotland. -In Scotland they’re very thick. Our new King, -they say, does most fearfully hate them! Parson -preached about them not long ago. He said that -we’d presently see a besom used in this kingdom -that would sweep such folk from every corner into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> -the fire! He read from the Bible and it said, ‘Thou -shalt not suffer a witch to live!’”</p> - -<p>He spoke with considerable cheer, the apple-red -back in his cheeks. “It’s good to feel,” he said, -“that they are nearly all women.”</p> - -<p>They were trampling across the bridge, on either -hand the sparkling water, above their heads the -vivid sky. “They are neither man nor woman,” -said Aderhold. “They are naught. There are no -witches.”</p> - -<p>He had spoken abstractedly, and more unguardedly -than was his wont. The words were no sooner -from his tongue than he felt alarm. They were not -safe words to have spoken, even in such simple -company as this. He looked aside and found that -Will was staring, round-eyed. “No witches?” asked -Will slowly. “Parson saith that none but miscreants -and unbelievers—”</p> - -<p>“Tell me about your church and parson,” said -Aderhold calmly, and, aided by a stumble of Will’s -horse and some question from the litter behind them, -avoided for that time the danger.</p> - -<p>They crossed the bridge and left behind the winding -river and the town that climbed to the castle, -clear-cut and dark against the brilliant sky. Before -them, lapped in the golden sunshine, spread a rich -landscape. Field and meadow, hill and dale, crystal -stream and tall, hanging woods, it flickered and -waved in the gilt light and the warm, blowing wind. -There were many trees by the wayside, and in their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> -branches a singing and fluttering of birds. The distance -shimmered; here was light and here were violet -shadows and everywhere hung the breath of spring. -From a hilltop they saw, some miles away, roofs and -a church tower. “Hawthorn Village,” said Will. -“The Oak Grange is two miles the other side.”</p> - -<p>Master Hardwick parted the curtains of the litter -and called to the physician. His heart, he said, was -beating too slowly; it frightened him, he thought it -might be going to stop. Aderhold reassured him. -He had a friendly, humorous, strengthening way with -his patients; they brightened beneath his touch, and -this old man was no exception. Master Hardwick -was comforted and said that he thought he could -sleep a little more. His lean hand clutched the -other’s wrist as he stood dismounted beside him, -litter and mules and Will on the sumpter horse having -all stopped in the lee of a green bank disked with -primroses. Master Hardwick made signs for the -physician to stoop. “Eh, kinsman,” he whispered. -“You and I are the only Aderholds in this part of the -world. And you are a good leech—a good leech! -Would you stay at the Oak Grange for your lodging, -man? I’ve no money—no money at all—but I’d -<i>lodge</i> you—”</p> - -<p>The miles decreased between the cavalcade and -the village. Aderhold was riding now alone, Carthew -still ahead, and Will fallen back with the litter. -Looking about him, the physician found something -very rich and fair in the day and the landscape. Not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span> -for a long time had he had such a feeling of health -and moving peace, a feeling that contained neither -fever nor exhaustion. There was a sense of clarity, -strength, and fineness; moreover, the scene itself -seemed to exhibit something unusual, to have a -strangeness of beauty, a richness, a quality as of a -picture where everything is ordered and heightened. -It had come about before, this certain sudden interfusion, -or permeation, or intensity of realization, -when all objects had taken on a depth and glow, -lucidity, beauty, and meaning. The countryside -before him was for an appreciable moment transfigured. -He saw it a world very lovely, very rich. -It was noble and good in his eyes—it was the -dear Earth as she might always be.... The glow -went as it had come, and there lay before him only -a fair, wooded English countryside, sun and shadow -and the April day.</p> - -<p>He saw the village clearly now, with a sailing of -birds about the church tower. Carthew, who had -kept steadily ahead, occupied apparently with his -own meditations, checked his horse and waited until -the other came up with him, then touched the roan -with his whip and he and the physician went on -together.</p> - -<p>There was something about this young man that -both interested and repelled. He was good-looking -and apparently intelligent. Silence itself was no bar -to liking, often it was quite the reverse. But Carthew’s -was no friendly and flowing quiet. His silence<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> -had a harsh and pent quality. He looked often like a -man in a dream, but the dream had in it no suavity, -but appeared to contemplate high and stern and -dreadful things. Aderhold looked instinctively first -at a man’s eyes. Carthew’s eyes were earnest and -intolerant. In the lower part of his face there was -something that spoke of passions sunken, covered -over, and weighted down.</p> - -<p>The two rode some little distance without speaking, -then Carthew opened his lips abruptly. “How -do you like this country?”</p> - -<p>“I like it well,” said Aderhold. “It is a fair -country.”</p> - -<p>“Fair and unfair,” answered the other. “It rests -like every other region under the primal Curse—The -old man, back there, has taken a fancy to you -and calls you his kinsman. Do you expect to bide at -the Oak Grange?”</p> - -<p>“I think it truth that I am his kinsman,” answered -Aderhold. “For the other—I do not -know.”</p> - -<p>“He is misliked hereabouts,” said Carthew. “He -is old and miserly. Those who have goods and gear -like him not because he will not spend with them, -and those who have none like him not because he -gives nothing. The Oak Grange is a ruinous place.”</p> - -<p>The village now opened before them, a considerable -cluster of houses, most of them small and poor, -climbing a low hill and spreading over a bit of -meadow. The houses were huddled together, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> -they enclosed a village green and here and there rose -old trees, or showed a tiny garden. At the farther -end, on the higher ground, the church lifted itself, -dominating. Beyond it ran the highway still. The -landscape was fair, with hill and dale, and to the -right, against the horizon, violet-hued and misty, an -old forest.</p> - -<p>Aderhold looked somewhat wistfully at the scene -before him. He had passed through much of harm -and peril. Body and mind he wanted rest, quiet -routine, for a time some ease. “It looks a place -where peace might be found,” he said.</p> - -<p>“Five years ago,” said Carthew, “we had the -sweating sickness. Many died. Then all saw the -shadow from the lifted Hand.”</p> - -<p>“It is wholesome now?”</p> - -<p>“Aye,” answered the other, “until sin and denial -again bring bodily grief.”</p> - -<p>Aderhold glanced aside at his companion. The latter -was riding with a stern and elevated countenance, -his lips moving slightly. The physician knew that -look no less than he had known the serving-man’s.</p> - -<p>“Is it not,” demanded Carthew, “is it not marvellous -how the whole Creation groaneth and travaileth -with the knowledge of her doom! How contemptible -and evil is this world! Yet here we are sifted -out—and not the wise man of old, nor the heathen, -nor the ignorant, nor the child in his cradle is excused! -Is it not marvellous how, under our very -feet, men and women and babes are burning in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> -hell! How, for Adam’s sin, all perish save only the -baptized believer—and he is saved in no wise of his -own effort and merit, but only of another’s! How -God electeth the very damned—and yet is their -guilt no whit the less! Is it not marvellous!”</p> - -<p>“Aye, fabulously marvellous,” said Aderhold.</p> - -<p>“The sense of sin!” pursued Carthew. “How it -presses hard upon my heart! The sense of sin!”</p> - -<p>Aderhold was silent. He possessed a vivid enough -realization of his many and recurring mistakes and -weaknesses, but, in the other’s meaning, he had no -sense of sin.</p> - -<p>They came to the village and rode through it, the -litter arousing curiosity, allayed every few yards by -Will’s statements. Aderhold observed the lack of -any sympathy with the sick old man, even the growling -note with which some of the people turned aside. -There was the usual village traffic in the crooked -street, the small shops and the doorways. Children -were marching with the geese upon the green, where -there was a pond, and near it the village stocks. -Housewives, with tucked-up skirts and with pattens,—for -an April shower had made mire of the ways,—clattered -to and fro or sat spinning by window or -door. Many of the men were in the fields, but there -were left those who traded or were mechanic, as well -as the aged, sitting, half-awake, half-asleep, in -sunny spots. It was the usual village of the time, -poor enough, far from clean, ignorant and full of -talk, and yet not without its small share of what<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span> -then counted for human flower and fruition, nor -without promise of the future’s flower and fruition.</p> - -<p>They rode by the church, set in dark yews. -Almost in its shadow rose a plain stone house. -“Master Thomas Clement, the minister’s,” said -Carthew. “Hawthorn hath a godly and zealous pastor! -The town behind us is all for prelates and vestments -and a full half at least of the old superstitions. -But Hawthorn and the country to the north have -purged themselves as far as they safely may.”</p> - -<p>Out upon the open road again they saw to the left, -back among trees upon a low hilltop, a large and -well-built house. “Carthew House,” said Carthew, -“where I live. But I think that I will ride on with -you to the Oak Grange.”</p> - -<p>Presently, leaving the highway, they took a rough -and narrow road that led, first through fields and -then through uncultivated country, toward the -great wood that had been for some time visible. -“Hawthorn Forest,” said Carthew. They rode a -mile in silence, the wood growing darker and taller -until it reared itself immediately before them. To -the right, at some little distance from the road and -almost upon the edge of the forest, stood a thatch-roofed -cottage with a dooryard where, later, flowers -would bloom, and under the eaves a row of beehives. -“Heron’s cottage,” said Carthew. “Old Heron -lives there, who in the old times was clerk to -the steward of the castle.”</p> - -<p>They entered the wood. It was dark and old,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> -parts of it not having been cut since Saxon times. -Their road, which was now hardly more than a cart -track, crossed but an angle, the Oak Grange lying -beyond in open country. But for some minutes they -were sunk in a wilderness of old trees, with a -spongy, leaf-thickened earth beneath the horses’ -hoofs. The sunshine fell shattered through an interlacing -of boughs just beginning to take on a hue of -spring. Every vista closed in a vaporous blue.</p> - -<p>A woman was gathering faggots in the wood. As -they came nearer she straightened herself and stood, -watching them. She was young and tall, grey-eyed, -and with braided hair the colour of ripe wheat. -“Heron’s daughter,” said Carthew when they had -passed. “She should cover her hair like other women -with a cap. It is not seemly to wear it so, in -braids that shine.”</p> - -<p>They were presently forth from the forest; before -them a stretch of fields no longer well husbanded, a -stream murmuring among stones, a bit of orchard, -and an old, dilapidated dwelling, better than a farm -house, less than a manor house, all crusted with lichen -and bunched with ivy. A little removed stood the -huge old granary that had given the place its name, -but it, too, looked forlorn, ruinous, and empty. -“The Oak Grange,” said Carthew. “People say that -once it was a great haunt of elves and fairies, and -that they are yet seen of moonlight nights, dancing -around yonder oak. They dance—but every seven -years they pay a tithe of their company to hell.”</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER VI</h2> - -<p class="pch">THE MAN WITH THE HAWK</p> - -<p class="pn1"><span class="smcap">Aderhold</span> saw no fairies, though sometimes of -moonlight nights he pleased his fancy by bringing -them in his mind’s eye in a ring around the oak. -Hours—days—weeks passed, and still he abode -at the Oak Grange.</p> - -<p>Together he and Master Hardwick had gone over -an ancient record. There was the Aderhold line, -intertwining with the Hardwick. The blood-tie was -not close, but it was there. Back in the reign of the -sixth Henry they found a common ancestor in one -Gilbertus Aderhold, slain on Bosworth Field. The -blood-warmth was between them. Moreover, the -old man had turned with a strong liking to this -present Aderhold, and besides all there was his fear -of illness and death. How well to have a leech -always at hand! At last it came to “Will you live -here for your roof and keep? I could not give you -money—no, no! I have no money to give.”</p> - -<p>Refuge—security—here in this silent place, -behind the great screen of Hawthorn Wood.... -Aderhold stayed and was glad to stay, and served -the old man well for his keep. The region grew to -know that here was old Master Hardwick’s kinsman, -brought with him when he came back from London,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> -to live with him and doubtless become his heir. He -was a leech. Goodman Cole, living by the forest, fell -ill of a racking cough and a burning fever, sent for -the doctor at the Grange, was swiftly better, and -sang the leech’s praises. As time wore on he began -to be sent for here and there, chiefly to poor people’s -houses. Eventually he doctored many of such -people, now in the village, now in the country roundabout. -Few of the well-to-do employed him; they -sent to the town for a physician of name. He asked -little money for his services; he did not press the -poor for payment, and often as not remitted the -whole. He earned enough to keep him clad, now and -then to purchase him a book.</p> - -<p>He soon came to the conclusion that whatever -store of gold Master Hardwick might once have had, -it was now a dwindling store. In whatever secret -place in his gaunt, bare room the old man kept his -wealth, he was, Aderhold thought, nearing the bottom -layer. There was a rueful truth in the anxiety -with which he regarded even the smallest piece of -either metal he must produce and part with. And if, -at the Oak Grange, there was little of outgo, there -was still less of income. The land which went with -the Grange was poor and poorly tilled. There was a -cot or two with tenants, dulled labourers, dully -labouring. Mostly they paid their rent in kind. He -heard it said that in his middle life Master Hardwick -had ventured with some voyage or other to the -Indies, and had received in increase twenty times<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> -his venture. If so, he thought that his venture must -have been but small.</p> - -<p>Master Hardwick kept but the one man, Will the -smith’s son, who did not sleep at the Grange, but -came each morning and cared for the horse and the -cow and the garden. Within doors there was old -Dorothy, who cooked and cleaned, and, now in and -now out, there strayed a lank, shy, tousle-headed -boy, her nephew. The old house was dim and still, -as out of the world as a house may be. Master Hardwick -rarely stirred abroad. There was in truth a lack -of health. The physician thought that the old man -had not many years to live. Aderhold set himself -with a steady kindness to doing what could be done, -to giving sympathy and understanding, and when -the old man wished it, companionship. Sitting in -the dim house with him, facing him at table over -their scant and simple fare, listening to his brief talk, -the physician came to find, beneath a hard and repellent -exterior, something sound enough, an honesty -and plain-dealing. And Master Hardwick, with -a hidden need both to feel and receive affection, -turned and clung to the younger man.</p> - -<p>Visitors of any nature rarely came to the Oak -Grange. The place was as retired as though fernseed -had been sprinkled about and the world really -could not see it. Once, during this early summer, -Harry Carthew came, riding across the stream upon -his great roan. But this day Aderhold was away, one -of the tenants breaking a leg and a small child being<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span> -sent wailing with the news to the Grange. And Master -Thomas Clement came, alike afresh to reason -with the miser and to view this new parishioner.</p> - -<p>Aderhold saw him cross the stream by the footbridge -and come on beneath the fairy oak. He knew -who it was, and he had time to map his course. He -had made up his mind—he was worn and weary -and buffeted, he was now for peace and quiet living. -He tied a millstone around the neck of the Gilbert -Aderhold of Paris and sank him deep, deep! The -minister stayed no great while and directed most of -his discourse toward Master Hardwick. When he -turned to Aderhold, the latter said little, listened -much, answered circumspectly, and endued himself -with an agreeing inclination of the head and an air of -grave respect. When the minister was gone, he went -and lay beneath the fairy oak, in the spangly twilight, -his head buried in his arms.</p> - -<p>The next Sunday he went to church and sat with a -still face, watching the sands run from the pulpit -glass. There were facts about the region which he -had gathered. The town a few miles away with the -earl’s seat above it was prelatical and all for “superstitious -usages.” The country between town and -village might be called debatable ground. But -Hawthorn Village and the region to the north of it -might have been approved by Calvin or by Knox.</p> - -<p>Sitting far back, in the bare, whitewashed church, -he remarked men and women truly happy in their -religion, men and women who showed zeal if not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span> -happiness, men and women who wore zeal because -it was the fashionable garment, men and women, -born followers, who trooped behind zeal in others, -and uttered war-cries in a language not their own. -In the pulpit there was flaming zeal. The sermon -dealt with miracles and prodigies, with the localities -of heaven and hell, with Death and the Judgement—Death -that entered the world five thousand -and six hundred and odd years ago. “For before -that time, my hearers, neither man nor animal nor -flower nor herb died!”</p> - -<p>Aderhold walked that summer far and wide, learning -the countryside. Now he wandered in deep -woods, now he climbed the hills and looked upon the -fair landscape shining away, now he entered leafy, -hidden vales, or traced some stream upward to its -source, or downward to the murmur of wider waters. -Several times he walked to the town. Here was a -bookshop, where, if he could not buy, he could yet -stand awhile and read.... He loved the view of this -town with the winding river and the bridge, and -above the climbing streets the old castle and the -castle wood. He liked to wander in its streets and to -mark the mellow light upon its houses. Now and -then he went into the great church where the light -fell through stained glass and lay athwart old pillars. -Once he found himself here, sitting in the shadow of -a pillar, when people began to enter. Some especial -service was to be held, he knew not wherefore. The -organ rolled and he sat where he was, for he loved<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> -music. There was a sermon, and it was directed -against Puritan and Presbyterian, and more especially -against that taint of Republicanism which -clung to their Geneva cloaks. No such imputation -breathed against the surplice. <i>The Divine Right of -Kings.</i>—<i>The duty of Passive Obedience.</i>—<i>Authority! -Authority! Authority!</i> It rolled through the church, -boomed forth with passion.</p> - -<p>Aderhold, coming out into the sunshine, walked -through the town and found himself upon the London -road. It was high summer, the sun yet far aloft, -and when it sank the round pearl of the moon would -rise. He had not before walked upon this road. An -interest stirred within him to view the country toward -the Rose Tavern, travelled through in the darkness -that night. He left the town behind him and -walked southward. Between two and three miles -out, he saw before him a little rise in the road, and -crowning it, a gibbet with some bones and shrivelled -flesh swinging in the chains. It was nothing uncommon; -he had seen in France a weary number of such -signposts, and on this great road, coming north from -London, he had twice passed such a thing. It was so -fair and soft a summer’s day, the gauzy air filled -with dancing sunbeams, the sky a melting blue—the -very upright and cross of the gibbet faded into it -and seemed robbed of horror. Indeed, long usage -had to the eyes of most robbed it of frightfulness at -any hour, unless it was in the dead of night when the -chains creaked, creaked, and something sighed.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> -The traffic of the road went talking and jesting by, -with hardly a glance aside at the arm across the -sky.</p> - -<p>Aderhold sat down upon the opposite bank, amid -fern and foxglove, and with his chin in his hand -regarded the gibbet. Now and again man and beast -passed, but they paid no attention to the dusty, -seated figure. For the greater while the road lay -bare. He gazed, dreaming, and through the mists of -time he seemed to see Judea....</p> - -<p>At last he spoke. “Carpenter of Nazareth! Man -as we are men, but a Prince in the house of Moral -Genius! Born with thy heritage, also, of an ancient, -savage faith, in thine ears, still, old saws of doom, -on thy lips at times hard sayings of that elder -world, in thy mind, yet unresolved, more than one -of the ancient riddles.... But thou thyself, through -all the realm of thy being, rising into the clearer -light, lifting where we all shall lift one day, transfiguring -life!... Genius and Golden Heart and Pure -Courage and Immortal Love.... Condemned by a -Church, handed over by it to the secular arm, gone -forth to thy martyr’s death—and still, Sage and -Seer! misunderstood and persecuted,—and still thou -standest with the martyrs ... slain afresh by many, -and not least by those who call themselves thine. -Wisdom, freedom, love.... Love—Love—Love!”</p> - -<p>The fox-gloves nodded around him. He drew -toward him a long stem and softly touched, one by -one, the purple bells. “Freedom—love!... Thou<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> -flower! When shall we see how thou flowest into -me and I into thee?”</p> - -<p>He let the purple stem swing back, and with his -hands about his knees again regarded the gibbet; -then, when some minutes had gone by, rose and pursued -his way. Another half-hour and he came to a -place where three roads met. A passing shepherd -boy told him the name was Heron’s Cross-Roads. -It was a lonely place, wold and stunted wood, and in -an angle, amid heath and briar, was set a blackened -stake. Aderhold went across to it. In the wood was -a rudely cut name, with a word or two below; the -stake was set through the heart of a suicide. Nettles -were about it, and some one passing had thrown an -empty and broken jug of earthenware. It lay in -shards. Aderhold knelt, gathered them together, -and rising, laid the heap beneath the hedge.</p> - -<p>Back upon the highway, he turned his face again -to the town. It was a long way to the Oak Grange, -and Master Hardwick was concerned if the house -were not closed and fast at a most early hour. -<i>Heron’s Cross-Roads.</i> As Aderhold walked an association -arose with the name. Heron—that was the -name of the old man who owned the cottage on the -edge of Hawthorn Forest. He was not there now; -the cottage had been shut up and tenantless since -early summer. He and his daughter were gone, Will -had told him, on a long visit to the old man’s brother, -the earl’s huntsman who lived in the castle wood -above the town. No one knew when they would be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> -back. Most of their furnishings and household things -had been loaned here or there. The dairy woman -had taken their cow, some one else the beehives. -Heron! He had a moment’s drifting vision of the -girl gathering faggots in the forest. It passed and -the present day and landscape took its place. Soon -he came again to the rise of ground and the gibbet -so stark against the blue. He hesitated, then -paused, resting as he had rested before upon a stone -sunk in the wayside growth.</p> - -<p>A horse and rider emerged with suddenness from a -sunken lane upon his left, and stood still in the middle -of the road—a fine horse, and a fine, richly -dressed rider, a man of thirty-five with a hawk upon -his gauntleted fist. Turning in the saddle he looked -about him, and espying Aderhold where he sat, -called to him.</p> - -<p>“Hey, friend! Have the earl and his train passed -this way?”</p> - -<p>“I have not seen them, sir.”</p> - -<p>The other glanced around again, then beckoned -with an easy command. Aderhold rose and went to -him, to find that he was wanted to hold the hooded -falcon while the horseman waited for the hawking -party from which some accident had separated him. -Aderhold took the peregrine from the other’s wrist -and stood stroking softly with one finger the blue-black -plumage. The rider rose in his stirrups, -swept the horizon with his eye, and settled back. -“Dust in the distance.” His voice went with his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> -looks—he seemed a rich and various person, who -could show both caprice and steadfastness. Now he -glanced downward at Aderhold. “Ha, I had not -observed you before!—A travelling scholar?”</p> - -<p>“A travelling physician, an it please you,” said -Aderhold, smoothing the bird with his finger, “biding -at present at the Oak Grange, beyond Hawthorn -Village.”</p> - -<p>“You take,” said the horseman with a glance at -the gibbet, “a merry signpost to rest beneath!”</p> - -<p>“It is neither merry nor dismal,” said Aderhold, -“but a subject for thought. That which swung -there swings there now—though shrunken and -dark and answering to no lust of the eye. But that -which never swung there swings there now neither. -I trouble it not. It is away from here.”</p> - -<p>The other swung himself from his saddle. “I had -rather philosophize than eat, drink, or go hawking—and -philosophers are most rare in this region!” -He took his seat upon a heap of stones, while his -horse beside him fell to grazing. “Come, sit and talk, -travelling scholar!—That fellow on the gibbet—that -small, cognized part of him that was hanged, as -you would say. Being hungry, he slew a deer for his -own use, then violently resisted and wounded those -sent to his hut to take him, and finally, in court he -miserably defamed and maligned the laws of the -land and the judge in his chair. So there he swings -for an example to stealers of deer and resisters of -constables, to say naught of blasphemers of procedure<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> -and churls to magistrates!... What is your -opinion, travelling scholar, of Authority?”</p> - -<p>“Nay,” said Aderhold, “what is yours?”</p> - -<p>The other laughed. “Mine, Sir Prudence?—Well, -at times I have thought this and at times that. -Once or twice a head like Roger Bacon’s has spoken. -‘The swollen stream forgets its source, and the overweening -son turns and with his knotted and sinewy -hands chokes his mother that bore him.’”</p> - -<p>“It is a good parable,” said Aderhold. “I trust -that your worship, being obviously of those in -authority, will often listen to that brazen head!”</p> - -<p>“Ah!” answered the other. “I am of that camp -and not of it. My brazen head will yet get me into -trouble!” He sat regarding the mound opposite, the -tall upright and arm, the creaking chain, and the -shapeless thing, now small, for most of the bones -had fallen, which swung and dangled. “And, -friend, what do you think of this matter of the -Golden Age, man’s perfection, Paradise, the friendship -of angels and all wisdom and happiness lying, -in the history of this orb, <i>behind</i> us?”</p> - -<p>“If it were so,” said Aderhold, “then were it well -to walk backwards.”</p> - -<p>“So saith my brazen head!—Hark!”</p> - -<p>It was a horn winding at no great distance. There -came a sound of approaching horsemen, of voices -and laughter. The waiting cavalier rose to his feet, -caught his horse by the bridle and mounted. Aderhold -gave him back the falcon. The earl and his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> -train, a dozen in all, gentlemen, falconers, and -grooms, coming across the fields, leaped the hedge -and crowded into the road, gathering into their -number the rider with the hawk. Aderhold heard -him named as “Sir Richard.” He waved his hand -to the physician—all rode away with a flash of -colour and a blare of sound. A few moments, and -there was only the bare highway, the little rise of -ground, and the gibbet with its outstretched arm -against the blue and serene sky.</p> - -<p>Aderhold, keeping on to the town, passed along -its bustling high street, and down the steep slope, -beneath the shadow of the great church and the -castle in its woods above, to the river and its many-arched, -ancient bridge. Before him lay the fair -country between the town and Hawthorn village. -He travelled through it in the late, golden light, and -at sunset came into Hawthorn. Children were playing -and calling in the one street and several lanes, -on the green, by the pond, and the village stocks. -The ale-house had its custom, but, as he presently -saw, most of the inhabitants of Hawthorn were -gathered in a buzzing cluster before the church. A -post, riding from London north, had passed through -the village and left behind a dole of news. Among -his items, principal to Hawthorn was this: The -King, they say, will presently of his good pleasure, -lighten the pains and penalties now imposed upon -Papists.</p> - -<p>Aderhold, touching the fringe of the crowd,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span> -caught a glimpse of Master Clement, standing upon -the church steps, haranguing. He caught the words, -“The Scarlet Woman ... Babylon ... Lighten? -Rather double and treble and quadruple—” Near -the minister he saw Harry Carthew. He did not -pause; he went by like a moth in the dusk. As the -moon rose he came to the stream before the Grange, -crossed it by the footbridge, and went on beneath -the fairy oak to the house where one candle shone -from a single window. In the middle of the night -he was wakened by some one calling and throwing -pebbles against his casement. The miller, a mile -down the stream, was ill and groaning for the leech.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER VII</h2> - -<p class="pch">JOAN</p> - -<p class="pn1"><span class="smcap">It</span> was May three years since Joan had smelled the -apple tree in blossom by the well, or had marked -the heartsease amid the grass. She drew her bucket -of water, flashing, dripping, and cold, rested it upon -the well-stone, and regarded with grey eyes the -cottage and its handbreadth of garden.</p> - -<p>She sighed. There had been much of advantage -in that long sojourn with her uncle the huntsman, in -his better house than this, a mile in the castle wood, -above the town so much greater than Hawthorn -Village! There had been the town to walk to, the -bright things to see, the bustle in the streets, the -music in the church, the occasional processions and -pageants, the fairs and feast days. For the castle -itself, the great family was not often there, but -the housekeeper had been friendly to her, and she -had been let to roam as she pleased through the -place, half-mediæval stronghold, half new walls and -chambers echoing Tudor luxury. Four times in the -three years the family had been in residence, and -then there were other things to watch, though at a -most respectful distance!... Once there had been -a masque in the park, and, as many figures were -needed, there had come an order from the countess.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span> -A page had brought it, and had explained in detail, -what was wanted. There was to be a whole pageant -of scenes from the mythology. She was to enact a -virgin who had been very swift of foot—she was to -run swiftly from north to south across the great -pleasaunce—a young gentleman, who would be -running likewise, would throw before her, one after -the other, three yellow apples. She would stoop and -pick them up while he ran on. She nodded. “Yes, I -know. Atalanta.” The page, who was younger than -herself but comely and court-bred, evinced surprise. -“Wherever, Phyllis, didst get that learning?” She -said that her father was clerkly and talked to her of -things in books.... The masque! It was a world -to remember, the masque! How beautiful all things -had been, and everybody—and kind! But there -had never been but the one masque, and soon the -family had gone away.</p> - -<p>She was thinking, as she stood by the well, that -now perhaps they would come back this May and -she would not be there. She drew a long sigh, and -missed the castle, the park and the wood, the town -and the sight of the river and the bridge, over which -something was always passing. She missed, too, her -uncle the huntsman, who had died; missed his -larger house and the greater coming and going; -missed her room, where, standing at her window, she -saw the moon rise behind the Black Tower. And -now her uncle was dead who had been a single man, -and who had kept them from month to month and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> -year to year with his loud protest each time they -talked of lifting a burden and going back to Hawthorn -Forest.... But he was dead, and his house -passed to the new huntsman. Joan and her father -loaded their clothes and such matters upon a cart, -mounted it themselves, and with some farewells to -castle neighbours took the road to their own small -cottage, miles away.</p> - -<p>She sighed, but then, with her eyes upon the -heartsease, determined to make the best of it. It -was not as though she did not love the cottage and -the garden, where presently all the flowers would -bloom again, and Hawthorn Forest, where she had -wandered freely from childhood. She did love them, -she had a warm love for them; and sometimes at her -uncle’s she had pleased herself with being pensive -and missing them sadly. She loved her father, too; -the old clerk and she were good friends, so good -friends, in an age of parental severity and filial awe, -as to have scandalized the housekeeper at the -castle. Moreover, though they were poor and had -always lived so retired, and though the country -hereabouts afforded few neighbours, and though she -had never known many people in the village, having -been but a young maid when she went away, there -were those whom she remembered, and she looked -forward to a renewal of acquaintance. And the day -was very rich and fair, and a robin singing, and -waves of fragrance blowing from the fruit trees, and -she was young and strong and innately joyous. She<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span> -broke a branch of apple blossom and stuck it into -the well water; she stooped and plucked a knot of -heartsease and fastened it at her bodice throat. -Then she lifted the bucket to her head, and moved -with it, tall and steady, over the worn stones of the -path to the cottage door.</p> - -<p>Arrived within, she fell to her baking, in a clean -kitchen with doors and windows wide. She was a -notable cook, her mother having trained her before -she died. Moreover, what she touched she touched -like an artist. She made no useless steps or movements, -she neither dallied nor hurried; all went with -a fine assurance, an easy “Long ago I knew how—but -if you ask me <i>how</i> I know—!” She sang as she -worked, a brave young carolling of Allan-à-Dale and -John-à-Green and Robin Hood and Maid Marian.</p> - -<p>The good odour of the bread arose and floated out -to mingle with the maytime of the little garden. -Old Roger Heron, short, ruddy, and hale for all he -was so clerkly, came in from his spading. “That -smells finely!” he said. He dipped a cup into the -well water and drank.</p> - -<p>“Aye, and it is going to taste finely!” answered -Joan.</p> - -<p class="pp6sq p1">“‘I have heard talk of bold Robin Hood,</p> -<p class="pp8">And of brave Little John,</p> -<p class="pp6">Of Friar Tuck and Will Scarlet,</p> -<p class="pp8">Locksley and Maid Marian—’”</p> - -<p class="p1">Her father put down the cup, moved to the settle, -and sitting deliberately down, began with deliberation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> -one of his talks of a thinking man. “Look you, -Joan! Goodman Cole and I have been discoursing. -We were talking of religion.”</p> - -<p>“Aye?” said Joan. She spread a white cloth upon -the table and set in the midst a bow-pot of cherry -bloom. “Religion. Well?”</p> - -<p>“You should say the word with a heavier tone,” -said old Roger. “‘Religion.’—Things aren’t here -as they were at your uncle’s—rest his soul! Modesty -in religion and a decent mirth seemed right -enough, seeing that the earl was minded that way -and on the whole the town as well. So the old games -and songs and ways went somehow on—though -everything was stiffening, even there, and not like -it was when I was young and the learned were talking -of the Greeks. But times have changed! It -seems the Lord wishes gloom, or the minister says he -does. If it was begun to be felt in the castle and the -town, and it was,—your uncle and I often talked -about it,—it shows ten times more here. Aye, it -showed three years ago, but Goodman Cole says it -grows day by day, and that now if you appear not -with a holy melancholy you are little else than a -lost soul!”</p> - -<p>“‘Holy melancholy’ and ‘lost souls,’” said Joan. -“I know not why it is that those words together -sound to me so foolish.—Doth it help anything -when I am sad?”</p> - -<p class="pp6sq p1">“‘—Friar Tuck and Will Scarlet,</p> -<p class="pp8">Locksley and Maid Marian—’”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span></p> - -<p class="p1">“Stop, child!” said old Roger. “I’m in earnest -and so must you be. Look you, Joan! you’re all I’ve -got, and folk will be fanciful about all they’ve -got and try to guard it all around. And it came -into my head while Goodman Cole was talking—and -it was he who put it there, talking of your -looks, and saying that you had better go mim-mouth -to church, and that you had a strange way of looking -straight at a body when you spoke, which didn’t -become a woman, who ought always to go with a -downcast look—it came into my head, I say, that -we’re poor and without any protector and fairly -strange here now, and how evil tongues are as common -as grass, and I said to myself that I’d give you -a good cautioning—”</p> - -<p>“Mim-mouth and downcast look and go to heaven -so!” said Joan. “I wonder what that heaven’s -like!”</p> - -<p>“You mustn’t talk that way,” said old Heron. -“No, I know, you don’t do so when others are by, but -you’ll forget sometime. Mistress Borrow at the -castle said that you were a very pagan, though an -innocent one! That came into my head, too, while -he talked. And another thing came that sounds -fanciful—but a myriad of women and girls have -found it no fancy! Listen to me, Joan. Since -we got our new King, and since the land has grown -so zealous and finds Satan at any neighbour’s hearth, -there’s been a growing ferreting out and hanging -of witches. In Scotland it’s a fever and a running<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> -fire and we’re not as far as the antipodes from Scotland. -Now I’m not denying that there are witches; -the Bible says there are, and so, of course, there -must be. But it knocks at my head that many a -silly old woman and many a young maid has been -called a witch that was none! And it came to me -that Hawthorn’s not the castle and the castle wood, -and that if Mistress Borrow called you pagan and -said that you stepped and spoke too freely for a -woman, it’s like that some here might take it on -themselves to think pure ill—”</p> - -<p>“I see not how they could,” said Joan. “There is -no ill to think.—Do you mean that I am not to -sing about Robin Hood and Maid Marian?”</p> - -<p>“I like to hear you,” said old Roger; “but aren’t -there godly hymns? Use your own good sense, my -girl.”</p> - -<p>Joan at the window looked out upon the flowering -trees and the springing grass and robin redbreast -carolling in the pear tree. When she turned her eyes -were misty. “I like to sing what I feel like singing. -If it chances to be a hymn, well and good—but a -forced hymn, meseems, is a fearful thing! I like to -go free, and I like not a mim-mouth and a downward -look. But I like not to bring trouble on you, and I -do not like either to have them set upon me for -ungodliness, nor to have some fool cry upon me for -a witch! So I’ll be careful. I promise you.” She laid -the trenchers upon the table and turned out from its -pan a warm and fragrant loaf. “I’ll be careful—oh,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> -careful!—And now when are we going to get -our beehives from the forester’s wife?”</p> - -<p>That afternoon she took her distaff and sat in the -doorway and span. The cottage stood some distance -from Hawthorn Forest road, but there was a -narrow greened-over path that wound between. -The robin sang lustily; daffodils, edging the walk to -the gate, were opening their golden cups. Old -Heron had gone a mile to engage Hugh the thatcher -to come to-morrow to mend the roof. Joan span and -span and thought of the castle and the masque.</p> - -<p>An hour passed. The gate-latch clicked and she -looked up. An old woman, much bent and helping -herself with a knobby stick, was coming toward -her between the rows of daffodils. When she reached -the doorstone Joan saw how wrinkled and drear were -her face and form. “Good-day,” she said in a -quavering voice.</p> - -<p>“Good-day,” answered Joan.</p> - -<p>“Good-day,” said the old woman again. “You -don’t remember me, but I remember you, my pretty -maid! I mind you running about in the woods, -playing as it were with your shadow, with your hair -braided down! Now you wear it under a cap as is -proper. I’m Mother Spuraway, who lives beyond -the mill-race.”</p> - -<p>“I remember now,” said Joan. “I had forgotten. -Will you sit down?”</p> - -<p>She brought a stool and set it for her visitor. The -other lowered herself stiffly. “Oh, my old bones!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> -I’ll sit for a minute, sweetheart, but what I wanted -to ask you—” She took Joan by the apron and -held her with shaking fingers. “I wanted to ask you -if you wouldn’t be Christian enough to spare me a -measure of meal? I’ll swear by the church door and -the book of prayer that I haven’t had bite nor sup -since this time yesterday!” She fell to whimpering.</p> - -<p>Joan stood, considering her with grey eyes. “Yes, -I’ll give you some meal. But what! They used to -say that you were well-to-do.”</p> - -<p>“Aye, aye!” said Mother Spuraway. “They said -sooth. I didn’t lack baked nor brewed, no, nor -silver sixpences!—for, look you, I knew all the good -herbs. But alack, alack! times are changed with -me.... I’m hungry, I’m hungry, and my gown’s -ragged that once was good and fine, and my shoes -are not fit to go to church in. Woe’s me—woe’s -me—woe’s me!”</p> - -<p>Joan went indoors and returned with a piece of -bread and a cup of milk. Mother Spuraway seized -them and ate and drank with feeble avidity. “Good -maid—a good maid!”</p> - -<p>“Why do they come to you no more?” asked -Joan.</p> - -<p>Mother Spuraway put down the empty cup. -“Partly, there’s a leech come to these parts has -stolen my trade. I’ll not say he doesn’t know the -herbs, too, but I knew them as well as he, and I knew -them first! But mostly, oh, dear heart! because -there’s been raised a hue and cry that I didn’t cure<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span> -with innocence—as though I didn’t cure as innocently -as him! But I’m old—I’m old!... I never -had aught to do even with white magic. There -was healing in the herbs and that and good sense -was enough. But I’m old—old, and they bear -hard upon women.... And I hear that there’s a -buzz of talk and I may be taken up. I know Master -Clement’s been against me since ever he came -to the parish—” She began to weep, painful slow -tears of age.</p> - -<p>Joan looked at her with a knitted brow. “There, -mother, there, mother! I would not let them that -hurt me make me weep. See! I’ll give you your -meal, and it will all come straight.” She brought -her a full measure, and a great share of her baking -of bread besides.</p> - -<p>Mother Spuraway blessed her for a pitiful maid, -got painfully to her feet, and said she would be going. -“You’ve good herbs in your garden, but I -see no rue. If I be straying this way again I’ll bring -you a bit for planting.”</p> - -<p>She went away, her stick supporting her, her eyes -still searching the little leaves and low plants on each -side of the garden path and the faint, winding track -between gate and forest road. Joan, in the doorway, -let her distaff fall and sat pondering, her elbow -on her knee, her chin in her hand, and her grey eyes -upon the fruit trees. “Shall I tell father—or shall -I not tell father? If I tell him, he will say she must -not come again.... And how am I going to help<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> -her coming again?” In the end, she determined to -tell her father, but to represent to him how hard it -was going to be—and how it seemed to her poor-spirited, -loveless, and mean—And as she got this -far, she saw another visitor coming.</p> - -<p>She knew this visitor, and springing up, went to -the gate to greet her. Before she left this countryside -she had often, of Sundays in Hawthorn Church, -sat beside Alison Inch, the sempstress’s daughter. -And after she went to the castle Alison had twice -been with her mother to the town, and they had -climbed the hill to the castle wood and the huntsman’s -house to see their old neighbours, though, -indeed, they had not been such near neighbours. -Alison was older than she, but at the castle hers had -been the advantage, she being at home with a number -of goodly things, and Alison showing herself somewhat -shy and deferential. But now the castle and -the park and her uncle’s house were a dream, and -Joan was back in Heron’s cottage that was not on -the whole so good as the Inches’ nor so near the village. -Moreover, she was now almost a stranger, and -knowledge and familiarity with all matters were on -Alison’s side, to say nothing of her year or two -longer in the world. Alison felt her advantages, and -was not averse to the other’s recognition of them. -Joan and she kissed, then moved somewhat saunteringly -up the path to the doorstone.</p> - -<p>“Mother and I went to take her new smocks to -Madam Carthew, and then when we came back it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span> -was so fine, and mother said that she would go to see -Margery Herd, and if I chose I might walk on here.—The -place looks,” said Alison, “as though you -had never gone away.”</p> - -<p>“Nay, there are things yet to do,” said Joan, -“and that though we’ve been here well-nigh a -month. You would not think how hard it is to get -back the gear we left with folk! They had the use -until we came back, and they knew that we would -come back—but now you might think that we -were asking their things instead of our own! Three -women have looked as black at me! We got our -churn but yesterday, and the forester’s wife still -has our beehives. A dozen of her own, and when we -ask for our poor three back again, you might suppose -we’d offered to steal the thatch from over her -head!”</p> - -<p>They sat down, facing each other, on the sunflecked -doorstone.</p> - -<p>Alison looked about her. “I’ve never seen daffodillies -bloom like these!—Joan, I heard a story on -thee the other day.”</p> - -<p>“What story?”</p> - -<p>“They said thou hadst a lover in the town—a -vintner.”</p> - -<p>“I never had a lover, town or country.”</p> - -<p>Alison made round eyes. “What! no one ever -asked you to wed?”</p> - -<p>“I said not that. I said that I never had a -lover.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span></p> - -<p>Alison fell to plaiting her apron, her head on one -side. “Mother says that your father’s that sunk in -notions of the learned that he’d never think of it, -but she wonders that your uncle didn’t see fit to -find you a husband.”</p> - -<p>“Does she? Well, one wonders over one thing and -one over another.”</p> - -<p>“There are very few bachelors and marriageable -men hereabouts,” said Alison, “but I suppose you’ll -get that one of them you set your cap for.”</p> - -<p>“And why do you suppose that?”</p> - -<p>Alison, her head still on one side, looked aslant at -the returned friend. “Oh, men are all for strange -and new! Your tallness, now, that most people -count a fault, and that colour hair and that colour -eyes.... Yes, you’ll get the one you want.”</p> - -<p>“And if I want none?”</p> - -<p>“Oh!” said Alison, and laughed somewhat shrilly. -“Have you got an elfin man for your true-love? -You’ll not cheat me else with your ‘And if I want -none?’”</p> - -<p>Joan twirled her distaff. “I do not wish to cheat -you.—And you went with the smocks to Madam -Carthew’s?”</p> - -<p>Alison bent, slipped off her shoe, and shook out of -it a minute pebble. “And what do you mean by -that?”</p> - -<p>“Mean? I mean naught,” said Joan. “I meant -that she was a great lady, and the squire’s house -must be fine to see. What didst think I meant?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span></p> - -<p>But Alison would not divulge. All that came was, -“<i>I</i> noted you last Sunday, how you looked aside, -during the singing, at the gentry in the squire’s pew! -But they are godly people, and if you think that <i>they</i> -looked aside—”</p> - -<p>“In God’s name!” said Joan, “what is the matter -with the wench?”</p> - -<p>But before she could find that out, here came one -back—Mother Spuraway, to wit. She came hobbling -up the green path to the gate, and stood beckoning. -Joan rose and went to her. Mother Spuraway -held in her hand a green herb taken up by the -root with earth clinging to it.</p> - -<p>“It is rue, dearie,” she said. “There was a clump -of it left by the burned cot a little way off. So I dug -it up for you—”</p> - -<p>Joan took it. “Thank you. I’ll plant it now.”</p> - -<p>“You’ve got company,” said Mother Spuraway. -“I’ll not come in. But I wanted to do somewhat -for you—”</p> - -<p>She turned and hobbled off, her wavering old -figure wavering away upon the twisting path.</p> - -<p>Joan went back to the doorstone with the rue in -her hand.</p> - -<p>“Wasn’t that Mother Spuraway?” asked Alison. -“I wouldn’t be seen talking to her. She’s a -witch.”</p> - -<p>“She’s no such thing,” said Joan. “She’s only a -wretched, poor old woman. Now, what did you -mean about Sunday and church?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span></p> - -<p>But her father came round the corner of the cottage, -bringing with him Hugh the thatcher to have a -look at the torn roof. Alison rose; the sun was getting -low and she must be going. She went, and -Joan, at that time, did not find out what she had -meant.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER VIII</h2> - -<p class="pch">THE SQUIRE’S BROTHER</p> - -<p class="pn1"><span class="smcap">Four</span> days later she went to walk in Hawthorn -Forest. It was a golden afternoon, and she had hastened -her work and got it out of hand. The roof was -mended, the beehives were back, the cottage taking -on an air of having been lived in all this while. Old -Heron earned by scrivener’s work. It was not much -that he found to do, but it gave them plain fare and -plain clothes to wear. Joan, too, from time to time -sold to a merchant flax that she had spun.... She -had gone no way into the forest since their return, -there had been each day so much to do! But to-day -an image had haunted her of how the forest used to -look in its garb of May.</p> - -<p>She let the gate-latch fall behind her and went out -in the grey-green gown that she had spun and dyed -herself. She wore a small cap of linen and a linen -kerchief. Sunday she would wear a bluish gown, and -a cap and kerchief of lawn. She was tall and light -upon her feet, grey-eyed and well-featured, with hair -more gold than brown, with a warm, sun-flushed, -smooth, fine-textured skin, and a good mouth and -chin and throat. The sun was three hours high; she -meant to have a long and beautiful time.</p> - -<p>So close to the forest edge was the cottage that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span> -almost immediately great trees were about her, -leaf-mould and flowerets beneath her feet. The forest -was hardly yet in full leaf. There spread about her -a divine pale emerald fretwork, and gold light in -lances and arrows, and closing the vistas purple light -in gauzy sheets and curtains. The boles of the -trees were marvels, the great spreading branches -kings’ wonders, every slight fern illustrious. The -stir and song of hidden birds, the scurrying of a hare, -a glimpse down a beechen aisle of a doe and fawn, -filled a cup of delight. She was Greek to it all, a -country girl of Attica. Merely to live was good, -merely to vibrate and quiver to the myriad straying -fingers of life, merely to be, and ever more to be, with -a fresh intensity!</p> - -<p>On she wandered with a light step and heart, now -by some handbreadth of sward, now in a maze of -trees. Now and then she stood still, gazing and -listening and smelling the good earth. Once or twice -she rested upon some protruding root or fallen log, -nursed her knees and marked the minute life about -her.</p> - -<p>Happy, happy, happy! with the blood coursing -warmly and sanely through her veins, with her senses -keen at the intake and her brain good at combining.... -Open places, small clearings, existed here -and there in the forest with, at great intervals, some -hut or poor cottage. So it was that she soon came -in sight of the burned cot and trodden bit of garden -whence Mother Spuraway had plucked the rue.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span></p> - -<p>The place lay curiously, half in gold light, half in -deep shadow. The stone chimney was standing, together -with some portion of charred rafter. There -were currant and gooseberry bushes, and a plum -tree, but the bit of garden-hedge was broken down -and all things had run to waste. Joan, drawing near, -heard children’s voices, and presently, touching the -cleared space, came into view of six or seven village -boys, who, roaming at will or sent on some errand -through the wood, had found here a resting-stage -and fascination. They were after something—she -thought a bird’s nest—in a crotch of the plum tree -that brushed the blackened chimney. She stood and -watched for a moment, then called to them. “Leave -that poor bird alone!” Two or three, turning, -laughed and jeered, and one small savage at the foot -of the tree threw a stone. Joan was angry, but she -could not help the bird—they probably had nest -and eggs by now. She went on, past the burned cot, -and was presently in the greenwood again.</p> - -<p>After a time she found herself upon the Oak -Grange road, running across this corner of the forest. -She had not meant to go this way, but a memory -came to her of a stream flowing over pebbles, of an -old house and an oak tree around which they used to -say the fairies danced at night. She walked on upon -the narrow and grass-grown road, and after a little -time it led her out of the wood and to the edge of the -pebbly stream. There was a footbridge thrown -across, but she did not mean to go over to the other<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span> -bank. She had no acquaintance at the Grange. She -had heard Goodman Cole say that the old miser, -Master Hardwick, was still alive, but was rarely -seen without the house. Will the smith’s son had -once worked at the Grange, but she did not know if -he were there yet.... She sat down on a stone at -this end of the bridge, and regarded now the old -ruinous house sunk in ivy, with the long grass and -ragged shrubs before it, and now the giant oak where -the fairies danced, and now the bright blue sky -behind with floating clouds, and now the shallow, -narrow river with its pebbly shore, and now she -regarded all in one. <i>Ripple, ripple!</i> sang the water.</p> - -<p>She sat there some time, but at last, with a long -breath, she stood up, looked a moment longer, then -turned and, reëntering the wood, faced homeward. -She had strolled and sauntered and spent her time. -Now the sun was getting low in the west. Presently -she left the road and took the forest track that -would bring her again by the burned cot.</p> - -<p>Through the thinning wood she saw the place -before her, in shadow now, except that the top of -the plum tree was gold. She thought that she still -heard the boys’ voices. Then, just at the edge of the -clearing, she came suddenly face to face with a man.</p> - -<p>He was a tall man, plainly dressed in some dark -stuff. Stopping as he did when he saw her, stepping -aside a pace to give her room, he chanced to come -into a ray of the last slant sunlight. It showed his -face, a lined, rather strange, not unpleasing face.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span> -He was carrying in the hollow of his arm a grey and -white cat. The creature lay stretched out, half-dead, -blood upon its fur.</p> - -<p>“Ah,” said Joan, “it was that they were tormenting!” -She stood still. She was sympathetic -with animals; they were like everything else, living -and loving to live. She thought they were very like -human beings.</p> - -<p>“Aye,” said the man. “But it can recover. It is -starved as well.” He looked at this chance-met -young woman. “I meant to carry it back to Dorothy -at the Grange,” he said. “But I am on my way -to visit a sick man and it will be much out of my -road. Do you live anywhere near?” He knit his -brows a little. He thought that by now he knew all -faces for a long way around, but he did not know her -face.</p> - -<p>“Aye,” said Joan. “I live at Heron’s cottage.—If -you wish me to, I’ll take her and give her milk to -drink and let her lie by the hearth for a while.”</p> - -<p>They were standing beneath the very last line of -trees, before there began the bit of waste and the -ruined garden. The village boys were there yet, -turned—all but two of them—to some other idle -sport about the chimney and the fallen beams. -These two, loath to give up the beast they were tormenting, -and childishly wrathful against the intruder, -stood watching him from behind a thorn -bush.</p> - -<p>“Will you do so?” said Aderhold. “That is well!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> -I am going your way through the wood. I will carry -it until we reach the path to the cottage.”</p> - -<p>They moved from the clearing and the sight of the -thorn bush. It was dim now in the wood, with an -evening wind and darkness stealing through. They -walked rather swiftly than slowly.</p> - -<p>“I heard that Goodman Heron had come back,” -said Aderhold. “You are his daughter?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. I’m Joan.”</p> - -<p>“You have been away a long time.”</p> - -<p>“Aye. Three years come Saint John’s Eve.”</p> - -<p>“Three years.—I have been here three years.”</p> - -<p>“You are the physician?” asked Joan. “You live -at the Oak Grange with Master Hardwick?”</p> - -<p>“Aye. At the Oak Grange.”</p> - -<p>“They say that fairies dance there and that a -demon haunts it.”</p> - -<p>“‘They say’ is the father and mother of delusion.”</p> - -<p>“I would wish there were no demons,” said Joan, -“but some fairies are not ill folk. But the minister -saith that God hates all alike.”</p> - -<p>They came to the edge of the forest, before them -the threadlike green path to Heron’s cottage. “I -must go on now by the road,” said Aderhold. Joan -held out her hands and he put in them the white and -grey cat. “You are a good maid to help me,” he -said. “I have little power to do aught for any one, -but if I can serve you ever I will.” He turned to the -road and the sick man, she to the cottage gate.</p> - -<p>The next morning there came a visitor, indeed,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> -to Heron’s cottage, Master Harry Carthew, the -squire’s brother, who fastened his horse to the elm at -the gate, and came up the path between the daffodils -in his great boots and his sad-coloured doublet and -wide-brimmed hat. Joan, watching from the window,—her -father was just without and would meet -him,—thought how handsome a man he was, but -also how stern was his aspect, stern almost as if the -world were all a churchyard, with graves about.... -It seemed that he had some writings that he wished -copied. As she moved about the kitchen she heard -his voice in explanation. The voice, she thought, -was like the gentleman, a well-made voice, and yet -hard, and yet melancholy, too. She heard him say -that he would ride by in a day or so for the writing—and -then he said that the day was warm and -asked for a cup of water.</p> - -<p>Old Heron turned his head. “Joan!”</p> - -<p>Joan filled a cup with fresh well water, set it on a -trencher for salver, and brought it forth to the -squire’s brother. He lifted it to his lips and drank. -Goodman Cole’s advice to the contrary, Joan stood -with a level gaze, with the result that she was aware -that as he drank he looked steadily at her over the -rim of the cup. It was not a free or distasteful look, -rather it had in it melancholy and wonder. He put -the cup down and presently went away.</p> - -<p>Two days thereafter he came with other papers to -be copied. A pouring rain arrived upon his heels and -he must sit with old Heron in the kitchen until it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> -was over. The room was bright and clean. Joan, -having put for him her father’s chair, sat to one side -spinning; old Heron took a stool. They were yeoman -stock, and the squire’s brother was gentry. Carthew -spoke little and the others waited for him to speak. -The room was quiet save for the whirr of the wheel -and the rain without. The white and grey cat lay -by the hearth. Old Heron had thrown fresh faggots -on the fire, and the tongues of flame threw a dancing -light.</p> - -<p>The little speech there was, and that solely between -the two men, fell upon the affairs of the country. -The discovery of the Gunpowder Plot was -seven months old, but England still echoed to the -stupendous noise it had made. Old Heron said -something that bore upon the now heavily penalized -state of the Catholics.</p> - -<p>“Aye, they pulled down their own house on their -own heads!” answered Carthew. He spoke with a -stern, intense triumph. “I would have them forth -from England! There is warrant for it in all histories. -As the Spaniards pushed out the Jews, so -I would push them out!”</p> - -<p>The rain stopped; he rose to go. Old Heron opening -the door, let in a burst of fresh sweetness. Joan -stood up from her wheel, and, as Carthew passed, -curtsied. He made an inclination of his head, their -eyes met. There was that in his look that both -challenged and besought, that, at all events, left her -troubled enough.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span></p> - -<p>Again two days and he came to recover what was -copied. Again she sat and span, and again she was -conscious that he looked at her rather than at her -father, and that, though he spoke aloud only to her -father, there was some utterance trying to pierce its -way to her. He went away—but the next day he -came again, when there was no looking for him.</p> - -<p>Her father was away to the village. She was at the -well, beneath the apple tree, by the heartsease bed. -She turned from lifting the cool, brimming, dripping -bucket, and saw him close beside her.</p> - -<p>“Good-day,” he said.</p> - -<p>“Good-day, sir.—He is not here. Father is not -here!”</p> - -<p>“I am sorry for that,” he answered; then, after -a silence in which she became aware that he was -fighting, she knew not why, for breath, “But you -are here.”</p> - -<p>“Aye,” said Joan. “I—I have so much to do.” -She left the bucket on the coping of the well and -started toward the cottage. “Father went but a -little while ago. You may overtake him, sir,—”</p> - -<p>Carthew stood before her. “I have seen you at -church three times. I have seen you here three -times. For years I had not thought of earthly toys—my -mind was set on the coming of the Kingdom -of God.... And now <i>you</i>—<i>you</i> come.... I think -you have bewitched me.”</p> - -<p>Joan’s heart beat violently. A strong presence -was beside her, before her. She wrenched herself free.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span> -“You must not speak so, sir. You must not speak -so, Master Carthew! I am naught to you—you -can be naught to me.” Brushing by him, she began -to walk swiftly toward the cottage.</p> - -<p>He kept beside her. “You are much to me—and -I will be much to you.... God knoweth the struggle, -and knoweth if I be damned or no!—But now -I will abide in this land that I believed not in—but -I will serve Him still; even where I am, I will serve -Him more strictly than before! So perhaps He will -accept, and not too dreadfully condemn.... Do not -doubt that I mean honestly by you.”</p> - -<p>“What you mean or mean not, I know not!” said -Joan. “But I am all but a stranger to you, sir, and -I will to remain so! Will you not go?—and my -father shall bring you the writings—”</p> - -<p>Carthew’s hand clasped and unclasped. He had -gone further than he ever meant to go to-day. -Indeed, he had no plan, no gathered ideas. He might -have pleaded that he was himself a victim, struck -down unawares. Forces within had gathered, no -doubt, for a violent reaction after violent, long-continued -repression, and chance had set a woman, -young and fair, in the eye of the reaction—and -now in his soul there was a divided will and war, -war! His brow showed struggle and misery, even -while his eyes and parted lips desired wholly.</p> - -<p>With effort he won a temporary control. “I did -not mean to frighten you. I mean no harm. I will -say nothing more—not now, at least. Yes, I will<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> -ride away now, and come for the writing another -day.—See, I am naught now but friend and well-wisher!”</p> - -<p>That a squire’s brother should conceive that he -might take some slight liberty with a cotter’s daughter, -that he might, on a May day and none looking, -snatch a kiss or steal an arm about her, was truly, -in Joan’s time, neither a great rarity nor a great -matter. If it went no further than that, it need -not be especially remembered. Rebuff with vigour, -if you chose, but so that the thing ended there, it -was no hanging matter! At the castle, page or esquire -might have been more forward than Carthew, -and Joan, though she sent them about their business, -might have done so with some inward laughter. -But Master Harry Carthew! He was a Puritan, -strict and stern, he was always with the minister, -he walked with the Bible and by the Bible. He was -no hypocrite either; it was easy to see that he was -earnest. Then what did he have to do with coming -here so, troubling her so? Joan felt a surge of -anger and fright. Something boding and pestilential -seemed to gather like a mist about her.</p> - -<p>The two, both silent now, moved out of the -shadow of the fruit trees into the blossomy handbreadth -before the cottage door. As they did so, -Alison Inch came by the gate, saw the horse fastened -to the elm, and, looking through the wicket, -Carthew and Joan. If she had meant to come in -or no did not appear; she stood stock-still for a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span> -moment, then put herself into motion again and -passed on.</p> - -<p>If Carthew saw her, he paid no attention. But -Joan saw her, saw her face quite plainly. When Carthew—with -a sudden and harsh “Good-bye for -this time; or, good-bye forever, if so be I can yet -kill this thing within me!”—strode away and -through the gate, and, mounting his horse, rode off -with a stiff bearing, not looking back, she stood for a -moment or two with a still, expressionless face, then, -moving slowly to the doorstep, sat down and took -her head into her hands. She was seeing again Alison’s -face. “That’s what she meant the other day—she -meant that at church I was minding, not the -psalm, but that man.... Then, doth she mind him -so herself that she looked so, there at the gate?... -Woe’s me!” mourned Joan. “Here’s a coil!”</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER IX</h2> - -<p class="pch">THE OAK GRANGE</p> - -<p class="pn1"><span class="smcap"><span class="smcap">Aderhold</span></span> sat in the moth-eaten old chair, in the -bare room, beside the bed in which, seventy-odd -years before, Master Hardwick had been born and -in which he was now to die. The old man lay high -upon the pillows. He slept a good deal, but when he -waked his mind was clear, not weakened like his -body. Indeed, the physician thought that the mental -flame burned more strongly toward the end, as -though Death fanned away some heavy and dulling -vapour.</p> - -<p>Master Hardwick was sleeping now. Old Dorothy -had tiptoed in to see how matters went, and, after -a whispered word, had tiptoed out again. She was -fond of Aderhold—she said that the Oak Grange -had been human since he came.</p> - -<p>He sat musing in the great chair. Four years.... -Four years in this still house. He felt a great -pity for the old man lying drawn and crumpled there -beside him, a pity and affection. The two were -kindred. He had this refuge, this nook in the world, -this home to be grateful for, and he was grateful. -Moreover, the old man depended upon him, depended -and clung.... Four years—four years -of security and peace. They had been bought at a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span> -price. He saw himself, a silent figure, watching all -things but saying naught, keeping silence, conforming, -agreeing by his silence. He thought a braver -man would not have been so silent.... Four -years—four years of the quietest routine, going -where there was sickness and he was called, wandering -far afield in a country not thickly peopled, lying -musing by streams or in deep woods, or moving upon -long bare hilltops with the storm sky or the blue -sky, going punctually to church each Sunday, paying -to the tithing-man some part of his scant earnings -... then at the Oak Grange sitting with this -old man, drawing him, when he could, out of his -self-absorption and his fears. Aderhold was tender -with his fears; that which weighed upon his own -soul was his own fear, and it made him comprehend -the other’s terrors, idle though he thought they -were. He thought that from some other dimension -his own would seem as idle—and yet they bowed -him down, and kept him forever fabricating a mask.</p> - -<p>Four years. In the small bare room which was -called his and which, through care for old Dorothy, -he himself kept and cleaned, there stood an oaken -press, where under lock and key he guarded ink -and pen and paper and a book that he was writing. -That guess at qualities, at origins and destinies, that -more or less mystical vision, taste and apprehension -of ground and consequence, that intuition of all -things in flood, of form out of form, of unity in -motion—all that in France he had outspoken, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span> -in speaking had like to have lost liberty and life—all -that he had not spoken of here these four years, -hard-by Hawthorn Village and church—all this he -was striving to put there upon paper. He rose at -dawn and wrote while the light strengthened; he -bought himself candles and wrote at night when all -the place was so still that silence grew sound. Four -years—.</p> - -<p>Master Hardwick stirred, opened his eyes. “Gilbert!”</p> - -<p>“I am here, cousin.”</p> - -<p>“How long—?”</p> - -<p>“I do not know. You do not fail fast nor easily. -Your body is courageous.”</p> - -<p>He gave him to drink. As he put down the cup -Dorothy opened the door. Behind her appeared a -man with a black dress, close-cut hair, and a steeple-crowned -hat. Although the day was warm he had -about him a wide cloak. He was short and thin, -with a pale, acrimonious, zealot’s face. He carried -in his hand a Geneva Bible.</p> - -<p>Dorothy stammered out, “Master Clement did -not wish to wait, master—”</p> - -<p>Clement spoke for himself. “While I waited your -master’s soul might have perished, for a soul can -perish in a twinkling.” He put the old woman aside -with his hand and came forward from the door to -the bed. “How do you do to-day, Master Hardwick?”</p> - -<p>The old man made a feeble movement upon his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span> -pillows. “I do as I have done, Master Clement,—I -run rapidly toward this life’s end.”</p> - -<p>“Yea,” said the minister, “and I fear me that you -run toward worse than this life’s end! I am come—I -am come, Master Hardwick, to wrestle with the -Devil for thy soul! I tell thee, it stands in mortal -danger of dropping from life’s end into that gulf -where Dives burns and is mocked from Abraham’s -bosom!”</p> - -<p>Aderhold had risen. Dorothy, having placed a -chair for Master Clement, was on the point of vanishing, -but the minister called her back. “Stay, -woman, and be edified likewise! Or wait! Call also -the serving-man and the lad that I saw without. It -befits that a dying man, suing for pardon to an -offended King, should have his household about -him.”</p> - -<p>Dorothy brought them in, Will and the boy, her -nephew. The three stood in a solemn row. Long -habit had made them accept old master and his -ways, but they did not doubt that he stood in peril -of his soul. It was proper that the minister should -exhort him. They stood with slightly lifted and -exalted countenances. After all, so little came into -their lives to make them feel a comparative righteousness, -to set them in any wise upon a platform -of honour!</p> - -<p>Master Hardwick lay awake and conscious but -passed beyond much speaking. Aderhold withdrew -into the shadow of the bed-curtains, and out of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span> -this twilight regarded Master Clement. He knew -of more than one or two heroic things which this man -had done. Moreover, he had heard that years before, -when Calvin had by no means as yet tinctured -England, Master Clement had stoutly set up his -standard and kept strict vigil before it. It was whispered -that he had stood in the pillory for “No Pope—and -No Prelates!” Aderhold, gazing upon him, -was aware that Master Clement would endure persecution -as unflinchingly as, indubitably, he would -inflict it. Each quality somehow cancelled the other—Master -Clement was out of it—and there was -left only the gross waste and suffering....</p> - -<p>Aderhold had heard priest and preacher, after -pulpit cries of human worthlessness, of the insignificance -of the soul, of universal and hopeless guilt, of -the inflamed mind of God, of the hell which, in the -course of nature, awaited every child of Adam, of -the predestination of some, indeed, through grace -of another, to an unearned glory, of the eternal, -insufferable loss and anguish of those multitudes -and multitudes and multitudes, who either had -never known or heard of that remedy, or who, the -Devil at their ear, had made bold to doubt its utter -efficacy—he had heard and seen such men, at -death-beds, in the presence of solemn and temperate -Death, turn from what they preached to Reason -and Love. He had heard them try to smooth away -the deep and dark trenches in the bewildered brain -which they themselves had done their best to dig.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span> -He thought their conversion the saddest miracle—sad, -for it did not last. Death passed for that -time from their view, back they went to preach to -listening throngs who must die, Inherited Guilt, Inherited, -fiendish punishment, an Inherited, fearful -God, an Inherited curse upon enquiry, and the humbling, -indeed, of an Inherited vicarious atonement.... -He wondered that they never foresaw their -own death-bed. He thought that they never truly, -bone and marrow, believed what they said, but that -the reverberating voices of the ages behind them -stunned, went through them, produced an automatic -voice and action. To resist that insistence, to breast -the roaring stream of the past—he acknowledged -that it was difficult, difficult!</p> - -<p>Three or four times in these years he had chanced -to find himself together with Master Clement at -some death-bed. Once he had seen him soften—a -child dying and crying out in terror of the Judgement -Day. “You were baptized—you were baptized—” -repeated the minister to him over and over again. -“I baptized you myself. You are safe—you are -safe, my dear child! The Lord Christ will help you—the -Lord Christ will help you—” But the child -had died in terror.</p> - -<p>To-day there was no softening in the aspect of -Master Clement. This old man before him was a -wretched miser hoarding gold, a solitary who in this -dark old house as probably as not practised alchemy, -lusting to turn lead and iron into gold, and as probably<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span> -as not practised it by unlawful and demoniacal -aid. Rarely was he seen in church—too feeble to -come, he said; too unwilling, thought Master Clement. -He did not give of his substance, he was bitter -and misliked, he asked no prayers—Master Clement -had many counts against him, and was fain -to believe that they tallied with God’s counts. He -girded himself and came forth to wrestle with and -throw this soul, and by the hair of its head to drag -it from the edge of the bottomless pit. He wrestled -for the better part of an hour.</p> - -<p>Master Hardwick lay unwinking, high upon his -pillows. Aderhold could not tell how much really -entered ear and mind; the old man seemed to be -regarding something far away, something growing -in the distance. The pity of it, he thought, was for -Will and old Dorothy and the boy; they were drinking, -drinking.</p> - -<p>At last Master Clement desisted. He stared with -a fixed face at Master Hardwick who stared beyond -him. “Thou impenitent old man—!” He -rose and with a gesture dismissed the three in line. -Will and Dorothy and the boy filed out, primed -to discuss among themselves master’s impenitency. -“I go now, Master Hardwick,” said the minister, -“but I shall come again to-morrow, though I fear me -thou art as utterly lost as any man in England!”</p> - -<p>Aderhold accompanied him from the chamber -into the hall. He knew that it was in order to speak -with unction of the just closed exhortation; to wonder<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> -at the minister’s fervent power, and deprecate -with sighs and shaken head the horrible wickedness -of the human heart; to marvel that any could hold -out against the truth so presented—how many -times had he heard such an utterance and seen the -self-congratulation behind—how many times! He -knew that the pause which the minister made, unconscious -as it certainly was, was a pause for the -accustomed admiration. When it did not come he -saw that, as unconsciously again, Master Clement’s -mistrust of him deepened. He knew that, for all -his locked lips and eyes withheld from expression, -for all his stillness, repression, and church-going, -the minister liked him not. The clash of minds -came subtly through whatever walls you might -build around it.</p> - -<p>“I fear, Master Aderhold,” now said the minister, -“that you have done little during your residence -with your kinsman to bring him to repentance. -Surely, in these years of such close communion, a -godly man could have done much! Such a man as -Harry Carthew would have had him by now day -and night upon his knees!”</p> - -<p>Aderhold sighed, then dropped the veil, and raising -his head, spoke eye to eye. “I would that I could -make you believe, Master Clement, that there is in -this old man who is coming to die more good than -ill. In these years that you speak of, I have seen -that good grow, of its own motion, upon the ill. -Why may it not continue, throughout oceans yet of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> -experience, to suffuse and gain upon and dissolve -and reconcile unto itself the ill?”</p> - -<p>Master Clement drew a sharp “Ha!” of triumph. -Here was heterodoxy raising its head, and the man -had always looked to him heterodox! “Ha! ‘<i>Of its -own motion!</i>’ Beware—beware, Master Aderhold! -I have marked you—I am marking you still! Beware -lest one day you be cited for a creeping, insidious -doubter and insinuator of false doctrine!”</p> - -<p>He went away, striding by the fairy oak in his -wide cloak and steeple hat, with a pale, wrathful, -intense face. Aderhold returned to the room and his -patient. Master Hardwick lay upon his pillows, -with a countenance much as it had been. Aderhold, -saying nothing, sat beside him, and presently he fell -asleep. Outside it was high summer, but cool, with -a moving air and a rustling of every leaf. Hours -passed, the day waned, the dusk set in. Aderhold, -moving softly, made a fire in the cavernous fireplace, -where, even in winter, Master Hardwick -rarely wasted firewood.</p> - -<p>When he came back the old man was awake.</p> - -<p>“Gilbert!”</p> - -<p>“Yes, cousin.”</p> - -<p>“I have a feeling that I am going to-night—”</p> - -<p>“It is possible.”</p> - -<p>“Gilbert ... you’ve been comfortable to me -these four years. You’ve been a kind of warmth -and stay, asking nothing, not wasting or spending, -but giving.... They think I am rich, but I am not.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span> -I was never very rich.... I ventured in the Indies’ -voyage and gained, and then I was a fool and ventured -again and lost. Since then I have been a poor -man. It is the truth.... Give me something to keep -me up—”</p> - -<p>Aderhold gave him wine. After a moment he -spoke again. “There are creditors in the town -that you’ll hear from. They’ll take the land—all -but the bit about the house. That and the house -I’ve willed you—kin to me, and kind as well.... -The gold they say I’ve buried—I’ve buried none. -There are twenty pieces that you’ll find in an opening -of the wall behind the panel there—” He -pointed with a shaking hand that sank at once. -“It’s all that’s left—and you’ll have to bury me -from it.... A miser.... Maybe, but what I saved -only lasted me through with spare living. If I had -told them of that heavy loss—my gold gone down -at sea, and that, even so, it was not so much I had -had to venture ... would they have believed me? -No! I was a miser—I lied and hid my gold.... -Well, I did not tell them.... Do not tell all that -you know and empty yourself like a wine skin—” -His voice sank, he slept again.</p> - -<p>Aderhold thought that he might sink from sleep -into stupor and so die painlessly and without words. -But in the middle of the night he waked again.</p> - -<p>“Gilbert!”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I am here.”</p> - -<p>“What did you think of all that which Master<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span> -Clement had to say?... How much was true and -how much was false?”</p> - -<p>“There was some truth. But much of it was false. -It is false because reason and feeling, the mind and -the spirit recoil from it. Whatever is, that is not.”</p> - -<p>“I never thought it was.... I’ve been called sour -and hard and withholding, and maybe I am it all. -But I would not make an imperfect creature and -then plague it through eternity for its imperfection.... -Gilbert—”</p> - -<p>“Yes?”</p> - -<p>“What would you do?”</p> - -<p>Aderhold came and knelt beside the bed, and laid -his hands over the cold and shrunken hand of Master -Hardwick. “I would trust and hope—and that -not less in myself than in that Other that seems to -spread around us. I think that ourselves and that -Other may turn out to be the same. I would think of -myself as continuing, as journeying on, as surely -carrying with me, in some fashion, memory of the -past, as growing endlessly through endless experience. -I would take courage. And if, in my heart, I -knew that in this life I had at times—not all the -time, but at times—been sour and hard and withholding -and fearful, and if I felt in my heart that -that made against light and love and wisdom and -strength for all—then, as I lay here dying, and as -I died, I would put that withholding and fear from -me, and step forth toward better things.... There -is within you a fountain of love and strength.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> -Trust yourself to your higher self.... Hoist sail -and away!”</p> - -<p>The night passed, and at dawn Master Hardwick -died. Aderhold closed his eyes, straightened his -limbs, and smoothed the bed upon which he lay. -Going to the window he set the casement wide. The -dawn was coming up in stairs and slopes of splendour. -The divine freshness, the purity, the high, austere -instigation, the beginning again.... The dawn perpetual, -never ceasing, the dawn elsewhere when here -would be noon, the dawn elsewhere when here would -be night—Never, from the first mists upon earth -rising to the great sun, had dawn failed, dawn rising -from the bath of night and sleep, dawn the new birth, -the beginning again, the clean-washed.... Aderhold -breathed the divine air, the blended solemnity -and sweetness. The light was growing, a thousand -beauties were unfolding, and with them laughter and -song. The water rippling over the stones came to -him with a sound of merriment. The window was -clustered around with ivy and a spray nodded, -nodded against his hand with an effect of familiarity, -a friend tapping to call his attention. From some -near-by bush a thrush began to sing—so golden, -so clear. “O moving great and small!” said Aderhold; -“O thought of all sense and soul, gathered, -interfused, and aware of a magic Oneness! O macrocosm -that I, the microcosm, will one day lift to -and be and know that I am—O sea of all faiths, -O temperer of every concept, O eternal permission<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> -and tolerance, nurse of growth and artifex of form -from form!... These children’s masks which we lift -upon a stick and call Thee, crying, Lo, this is God -with the fixed face—”</p> - -<p>He rested a little longer in the window, listening -to the thrush, then turned, looked again at the quiet -figure upon the bed, and going from the room -wakened old Dorothy and the boy. Later that day, -Will, Goodman Cole, old Heron, and a lawyer from -the town being present, he searched for and found the -spring that opened the panel Master Hardwick had -indicated. Behind was a recess, and within it twenty -gold-pieces. He gave them into the lawyer’s hands -for keeping.</p> - -<p>They buried Master Hardwick in Hawthorn -Churchyard. Hard upon the end of that, there appeared -a merchant and a man of means from the -town with a note-of-hand. The farm land, such as -it was, would go there in satisfaction. The lawyer -produced a will made one year before. Lacking issue -and near kindred, Master Hardwick left all that he -had, his creditors being satisfied, to his loving cousin, -the physician, Gilbert Aderhold. What that was in -reality was solely the decaying old house and the -few acres of worn garden and orchard immediately -surrounding it. The twenty pieces of gold, when all -was paid, shrunk to three.</p> - -<p>Aderhold dwelled solitary in the Oak Grange as -he and his kinsman had dwelled solitary before. The -land around went no longer with the Grange, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> -there was no change else. The old tenants hung on; -it still spread, poor in soil, poorly tilled, shut off from -the richer vale by Hawthorn Forest. Will no longer -came to the Grange; Aderhold, old Dorothy, and -the boy lived in the place and kept it. There was no -other money than the scant sixpences and shillings -that the physician gained. To sell the house sounded -well, but there was no purchaser. The place was -ruinous, lonely, and without advantage, said to be -haunted as well. Aderhold, only, had grown to -love it, the ivied walls and the wild garden, the oak -and the stream, and the room where he took from -behind locked doors his book and sat and wrote. -All was so quiet, still, secure, there behind the shield -of Hawthorn Forest....</p> - -<p>But Hawthorn countryside and village refused to -believe that the gold was gone. It was known that -the dead miser had had a chest-full of broad pieces. -Probably he had buried this great store—some -said under the house itself, some said under the -fairies’ oak. Wherever it was buried, certainly the -leech must know where it was; or if he did not know -yet, he would. If one were to go that way through -Hawthorn Forest, and come into sight of the house -and see a candle passing from window to window, -or hear a digging sound in the orchard or beneath -the ill-named oak, that would be he.... A whisper -arose, none knew how, that Master Hardwick had -practised alchemy, and that his kinsman practised -it too; that he knew how to make gold. If he knew,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span> -then, of course, he would be making it, in the dead of -night. Could you make gold alone, unaided by any -but your own powers? Alchemists, it was known, -did not hesitate to raise a spirit or demon. Then -there was little difference between an alchemist and -a sorcerer?... There came among the whispers a -counter-statement from several cotters and poor -folk. Master Aderhold was no sorcerer—he was -a good leech; witness such and such a cure! Whereupon -opposition sharpened the whisperers’ ingenuity. -Aye, perhaps the demon helped him cure as -well as make gold! Came another counter—he was -a good church-goer. So! <i>but Master Clement thinks -not highly of him</i>.</p> - -<p>How this vortex and whirling storm began, whose -breath first stirred it up, it were hard to say. It had -moved in widening rings for months, before Aderhold -discovered how darkened was the air about -him.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER X</h2> - -<p class="pch">IN HAWTHORN FOREST</p> - -<p class="pn1"><span class="smcap">It</span> was winter—a mild, bright, winter’s day—when, -for the second time, he met and spoke to Joan in the -forest. She was standing beneath a beech tree, in -her hand a dry, fallen bough which she was brandishing -and making play with as though it had been -a quarter-staff. She was singing, though not in the -least loudly,—</p> - -<p class="pp6sq p1">“‘I have heard talk of bold Robin Hood,</p> -<p class="pp7">And of brave Little John,</p> -<p class="pp6">Of Friar Tuck and Will Scarlet,</p> -<p class="pp7">Locksley and Maid Marian—’”</p> - -<p class="p1">When she saw Aderhold close to her she started -violently.</p> - -<p>“Good-day,” he said. “I meant not to frighten -you!”</p> - -<p>She looked at him curiously and shook her head. -“No.... You did not frighten me. I am not at all -frighted.”</p> - -<p>He smiled. “You say that as though you were -surprised at yourself.”</p> - -<p>She looked at him again with grey eyes half-troubled, -half-fearless. “It isn’t so hard to surprise -yourself.... You did take that cat you gave me from -the boys who were stoning her at the burned cot?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Yes,” said Aderhold, surprised in his turn. -“Why?”</p> - -<p>She stammered. “I heard them talking, and -though I believe not such things, I—I—”</p> - -<p>“What things?”</p> - -<p>She was silent for a moment, then faced him with -courage. “I have heard talk that you don’t believe -what other people believe, that you deny things that -are in the Bible, and that maybe you practise sorcery -there in the Oak Grange.... And—and some -one once told me that—that people like that had -always familiars which went mostly like little animals -such as a cat or small dog, or sometimes a bird -or a frog,—and that—and that if they offered to -give you such a thing for a gift and—and you took -it, you signed yourself so to the Evil One.... But—but -I do not believe such things. They are -against all goodness and—and good sense.”</p> - -<p>She ended somewhat breathlessly; for all her courage, -which was great, her heart was beating hard.</p> - -<p>“You are right,” said Aderhold. “Such things -are against all goodness and good sense—and they -do not happen.... I was going to see a sick man, -and passing by the burned cottage, I heard the cat -crying, and went and took her from the boys. She’s -naught but just your fireside cat. And I am a solitary -man who has no familiar and knows no magic.”</p> - -<p>He drew a heavy, oppressed breath. “I did not -know that there was any such talk.... It is miserable -that there should be.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span></p> - -<p>He stood leaning against a tree, with half-shut -eyes. Old fears came over him in a thick and sickening -wave.</p> - -<p>“Oh—talk!” said Joan. “There’s always such -a weary deal of talk.” She had regained her calm; -at least she was no longer afraid of the physician. -But for all that—and for all her comparative happiness -this beautiful day and for her singing—she -looked older and less care-free than she had done -last year. Her face was thinner, and there appeared -in her, now and again, a startled, listening -air. It came now. “Do you hear a horse coming?”</p> - -<p>At no part in the forest were you far from some -cart track along which might, indeed, push a horseman. -One was here now, leaving the track and coming -between the tree boles. Presumably he had -heard voices.</p> - -<p>Joan rose to her feet. Her eyes were glittering. -“No peace—” she said. “He leaves me no peace -at all. I wish he were dead.”</p> - -<p>She spoke in a very low voice, hardly above a -whisper, measured, but tinctured with both anger -and dread. It was Harry Carthew, Aderhold now -saw, who approached. He caught sight of them, -checked the roan a perceptible moment, then came -on. The great horse stopped within ten feet of the -two beneath the beech tree. Carthew sat looking at -them, a strange expression upon his face.</p> - -<p>Aderhold had no knowledge of the why or wherefore -of his look, though Joan’s ejaculation might be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> -making for illumination. But his mind was preoccupied -with those pale fears which her earlier speech -had awakened. He was thinking only of these—or -rather he was not consciously thinking at all; he was -only gathering his forces forward after the recoil. -He answered Carthew’s look with a somewhat blank -gaze. “Good-day,” he said.</p> - -<p>“Give you good-day,” answered Carthew. “How -long have you and Joan Heron been trysting?”</p> - -<p>Aderhold’s thoughts were still away. He repeated -the word after the other, but put no meaning to it. -“‘Trysting’—”</p> - -<p>It was Joan who took it up, with a flame of anger. -“Who is trysting, Master Carthew?—Not one of -these three—not he with me, nor I with him, nor I -with you! God’s mercy! Cannot a girl speak a civil -word to a chance-met neighbour—”</p> - -<p>“‘Neighbour,’” said Carthew. “That is true. I -had not thought of that. The Grange and Heron’s -cottage are not so far apart—might be said to be -neighbours.—’Neighbours’—it is easy for neighbours -to meet—with this dark wood touching each -house.” He lifted his hand to his throat, then -turned upon Aderhold with a brow so black, a gesture -so violent that the other instinctively gave back -a pace. “I have been blind!” cried Carthew thickly. -“I have been blind!”</p> - -<p>Aderhold, amazed, spoke with an awakening and -answering anger. “I do not know what you mean, -Master Carthew,—or, if I guess, seeing that your<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> -words will bear that interpretation,—I will tell you -that your bolt goes wide!—Mistress Joan Heron -and I chanced to meet five minutes before you appeared -before us—and I do think in my soul that -it is the second time we have spoken together in our -lives! And I know not your right—”</p> - -<p>“‘Right!’” broke in Joan with passion. “He has -no right! And I will not have him couple my name -here and couple it there! Oh, I would”—her eyes -blazed at Carthew—“I would that so great a saint -would leave this earth and go to heaven—if that, -indeed, is where you belong!”</p> - -<p>Carthew sat his horse, dark as a thunder-cloud, -and for all his iron frame and power of control, shaking -like a leaf. “I believe neither of you,” he said -thickly. He looked at Joan. “This is why you will -not turn to me.”</p> - -<p>Her eyes flamed against him. “I never thought to -hate a human creature as you have made me hate -you!—And now I am going home.”</p> - -<p>She snatched up the staff with which she had been -playing and turned with decision. He turned his -horse also, but uncertainly, with his eyes yet upon -Aderhold. Black wrath and jealousy were written -in his face, and something else, a despairing struggle -against total self-abandonment. “Stay a moment!” -he cried to Joan. “Will you swear by God on high -that you and this man have not been meeting, meeting -in Hawthorn Forest?”</p> - -<p>Joan turned, stood still the moment asked.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Master Carthew, shall I tell you what I shall -shortly do if you leave me not alone? I shall go with -my father to the squire your brother, and to the -minister, and to the three most zealous men in -Hawthorn Parish, and I shall say to them, ‘This -holy and zealous young man whom I have heard you, -Master Clement, call Joseph, and young David, and -what-not—this same Master Harry Carthew, who -will speak and exhort and pray with sinners,—this -same man has for months made a harmless girl’s life -wretched to her, offering loathed love and insult—’”</p> - -<p>Her voice broke; she threw up her arms in a gesture -of anger and unhappiness and fled away. Carthew -sat like a graven image, watching her go. He -spoke to himself, in a curious voice from the lips -only. “If ever I should come to hate you as now I—” -and again—“She will never dare—” The last -flutter of her skirt vanished among the trees. Suddenly -he said with violence, “She denied it not!” -and turned upon Aderhold as though he would ride -him down.</p> - -<p>The physician caught the bridle of the roan. -“You are mad, Master Carthew! Look at me!”</p> - -<p>He forced the other’s gaze upon him and a somewhat -cooler judgement into his eyes. Each, with his -inner vision, was viewing in waves and sequences -past relations, knowledge, and impressions. For the -first time, general observation and lukewarm interest -quickened into the keen and particular and well-warmed. -Aderhold saw again Carthew at the Rose<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> -Tavern, and Carthew upon the road; heard again -Carthew’s cosmic speculations and Carthew’s expressed -sense of sin. Four years gone by, and yet -that impression remained the most deeply graved. -After that came the long stretch of time in this region, -and, during it, little speech, few meetings with -Carthew. There had been knowledge that at times -he was away, often for months, from Hawthorn, -and there had been observation at church and elsewhere -of the sterner sort in him of Puritan zeal and -faith, together with hearsay that the minister and -he were like elder and younger brother in the word, -and the younger a growing power in this part of -England and a chosen vessel. And there had been -a kind of half-melancholy, half-artistic and philosophic -recognition of the perfection of the specimen -Carthew afforded. In look, frame, dress, countenance, -temper, and inward being, he seemed the -exactest symbol!—Nowhere further than all this -had Aderhold come until to-day.</p> - -<p>As for Carthew, with far narrower powers of reflection, -and with those concentrated with hectic -intensity in a small round, it might be said that in -these years he had barely regarded or thought of the -physician at all. Such a statement would be true of -all sides but one. Master Clement had, within the -past year, doubted to him any true zeal in religion -on the part of the physician, and had set up a faint -current of observation and misliking. It had been -nothing much; at times, when he thought of it, he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span> -marked Aderhold at church, how he looked and demeaned -himself; once or twice when he had overheard -some peasant speak of the leech, he had come in with -his deep and stern voice. “Aye? Can he doctor thy -soul as well as thy body?” But the whole together -had weighed little. He had the soul of Harry Carthew -to be concerned for ... though, of course, for -that very soul’s salvation, it behooved to see that -other lamps were kept burning.... Nay, it behooved -for those others’ salvation—for the warfare of the -true saint was for the salvation of every soul alive!—All -this was before the past few months. Through -these months he had thought but of one thing—or -if at all of another thing, then of how his own soul -was on the brink of the pit, with the Devil whispering, -and the heat of the flame of hell already burning -within him.... And now, suddenly, it seemed -that the physician living at the Oak Grange was a -figure in the sum. He looked at him, and where -before he had seen but a silently coming and going -learned man, to be somewhat closely watched by -God’s saints lest mysterious knowledge should lead -him astray, he saw now a tall man, still young, not -ill-looking, with strange knowledge that might teach -him how to ingratiate.... He spoke in a hollow -voice. “I have been blind.”</p> - -<p>“Whatever you may have been,” said Aderhold -with impatience, “you are blind in this hour. Look -at me! Not for the sake of myself, but for the sake of -truth, and to guard another from misapprehension,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span> -and to take a strange poison from your mind, I -swear most solemnly that that maid and I were -chance-met but now beneath this tree; that we -spoke most generally, and far afield from what you -madly imagine; and that, save for once before as -chance and momentary a meeting, never have we -been alone together! I swear that I think in that -wise of no woman, and no woman of me!”</p> - -<p>“I would,” said Carthew heavily, “that I knew -that you speak truth.”</p> - -<p>“I speak it,” said Aderhold. “And in turn I -would that you might bring wisdom and better love -into your counsel, and leave the maid alone!”</p> - -<p>Carthew looked at him. “Is there idle talk. Have -you heard such tongue-clatter?”</p> - -<p>“Not I,” answered the other. “What I perceive -you yourself have shown.”</p> - -<p>“Or she has said,” said Carthew. He moistened -his lips. “Foolish maids will make much of slight -matters!—If I have slipped a little—if Satan hath -tempted me and the foul weakness of universal -nature—so that I have chanced, perhaps, to give -her a kiss or to tell her that she was fair—what hath -it been to her hurt? Naught—no hurt at all. But -to me.... Nay, I will recover myself. God help -me! I will not put my soul in perdition. God help -me!” He lifted his clasped hands, then let them -drop to his saddle-bow. “I will begin by believing -even where I believe not! What hurt to me if now -and again you and Joan Heron speak in passing?—so<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> -be it that with your evil learning and your -commerce who knows where, you put not the maid’s -soul in peril ... so be it that you touch not her lips -nor her hand—” He ceased to speak, his face working.</p> - -<p>“You are much to be pitied,” said Aderhold. -“Have you finished?—for I would be going.”</p> - -<p>He drew his cloak about him, and made to pass -the other.</p> - -<p>Carthew did not detain him; he only said, “But I -shall watch you,” gathered up the roan’s reins, and -himself rode starkly off in the direction of the village.</p> - -<p>Back upon the forest track which he had pursued, -and then upon the road that ran between Hawthorn -and the Oak Grange, he saw naught of Joan, though -he looked for her. She was fleet-footed; by now she -was within her own door. But on the road, no great -distance beyond the cottage, he came upon another -woman, walking toward the village. This was the -sempstress’s daughter, Alison Inch.... Two years -gone by, Alison had spent some weeks in Carthew -House, sewing for Madam Carthew. He had been -reading aloud that winter to his sister-in-law, who -was a learned and pious lady, and Alison had sat -in a corner, sewing and listening. The reading -done, he had at times explained the discourse or -added illustration, encouraging the women to ask -questions.—He felt friendly toward Alison, and -always, since that time, answered her curtsy when -they chanced to meet by a grave enquiry as to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span> -her health and welfare, the spiritual being meant -rather than the bodily. To-day he walked his horse -beside her.</p> - -<p>“You have been riding through the forest, sir?” -she asked. “It is a fine day for riding.”</p> - -<p>“Yes—I wished to enquire for a man at the -North-End Farm.”</p> - -<p>He rode and she walked in silence, then she spoke -in a dry, thin, and strained voice. “I was walking to -Heron’s cottage to see Joan. But she was not there.—She’s -not much like others. When she gets her -work done, she’s off to herself somewhere—maybe -to the wood, maybe elsewhere. It’s often so that -you can’t find her.”</p> - -<p>Now Carthew had found, too, that you couldn’t -always find her. Suddenly his brow grew black -again; he had not put that two and two together. -“Alison,” he said and paused.</p> - -<p>Alison, with an air of not looking at him at all, -was watching closely. “Yes, Master Carthew?”</p> - -<p>He rode a little farther in silence, then he said -determinedly: “Master Aderhold who lives at the -Oak Grange—” He paused.</p> - -<p>“Yes, sir?” said Alison.</p> - -<p>“He is a strange man,” said Carthew. “I remember -when he came to Hawthorn, when I rode with -him from the town, I thought him of a strange and -doubtful mind.—We have not caught him tripping -yet, but Master Clement holds that he thinks perversely, -not according to sound doctrine.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span></p> - -<p>“People say that he makes gold and hoards it,” -said Alison, “and that he hath a familiar.” She was -not interested in Master Aderhold, but she would -keep up whatever ball Master Harry Carthew tossed.</p> - -<p>“I know not as to that,” said Carthew. “It is -enough if he setteth up his own judgement and -denieth essential doctrines.—It were surely ill for -any upon whom he might thrust his company—ill, -I mean, for them to be seen with him often and in -close talk. In common charity any such should be -warned. I dare aver he is often straying through the -forest or upon this road.”</p> - -<p>Alison looked aside. She did not know yet what he -would be at, but her every sense was sharpened.</p> - -<p>“Have you ever seen,” asked Carthew with careful -carelessness—“have you ever chanced to see him -and Goodman Heron’s daughter Joan together?”</p> - -<p>Alison walked thrice her own length upon the -shadowy road before she answered. It took a little -time to get it straight. It wasn’t Joan’s soul that he -was concerned about—thought one. He was putting -her name with that of the leech—had he seen -them together, and now was eaten with jealousy? -She knew how it felt to be eaten with jealousy—thought -two. If he believed that Joan played him -false—put him off for another—it could not but -help, his thinking that....</p> - -<p>“Oh, aye!” said Alison. “I have seen them a dozen -times walking and talking together in the forest. -But what a sin, sir, if he should teach her heresy!”</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER XI</h2> - -<p class="pch">THE PLAGUE</p> - -<p class="pn1"><span class="smcap">Late</span> that winter, after long immunity, black sickness -came to the town with the great church and the -castle, and cast a long, crooked finger across the -river and in the direction of Hawthorn Village. In -the streets of the town burned fires of juniper. Waking -in the night you might hear the wheels of the -death-cart. They stopped before this house, they -stopped before that house. The thought trembled -and shrank—one night will they stop before this -house? In the daytime the bells were tolled.</p> - -<p>Hawthorn Village tolled no bells, for to toll bells -savoured of “superstitious usages.” But it looked -with a clammy terror at the black finger which had -touched a farmhouse midway between village and -town.</p> - -<p>The plague grew worse in the town. More and yet -more houses were marked and shut. The richer sort -and those who could left the place, scattered through -the country, not always welcome where they appeared. -The mass who must stay saw the horror -increase. A pall came over the place; there grew an -insistent and rapid murmur of prayers. Side by side -with that occurred a relaxation and neglect of usual -order. The strict rule in such cases was against<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span> -people coming together in any manner of congregation -whereby the infection might spread; but the -watch grew sick and fear constantly sought companions. -There was much drinking in alehouses and -taverns, no little gathering together of one sort and -another. Side by side with wild appeals and supplications -to Heaven wavered a sick and wan determination -to some sort of mirth. At times this spirit -rose to dare-deviltry. Small crimes increased. The -poor were the hardest stricken, seeing that for them -starvation clanked behind disease. Theft and housebreaking -grew common, while professional thieves -might and did make a harvest feast. The church bells -tolled. At night the death-carts increased in number, -the closed houses increased in number, the juniper -smoke rolled thicker and thicker.</p> - -<p>But after one death in the farmhouse, halfway to -Hawthorn, the black finger drew back. No one else -at the farm was taken, the scattered houses between -it and the village went unscathed; time passed and -no harm came to Hawthorn. Some said the river -barred the infection, others that the air was different. -One or two at most called attention to the great -crowding in the town, to the massed poverty and -dirt,—whereas the village was open-built and reasonably -clean,—and to the traffic between the -town and a large seaport, whereas small was the -business of Hawthorn and few the strangers. But -the most part of Hawthorn Village and the country -to the north of it knew otherwise and said otherwise<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span> -with unction and lifted looks. Pestilence came like -comets, as a visitation and a sign from on high. -Jehovah launched the one and the other. Fire -against the cities of the plain—plague against prelatical -towns and castles, only not Popish by a narrow -line, retainers of stained glass and images, organ-players -and bowers of the head, waiting but their -chance to reinstate a wearing of copes and lighting -of candles! The wonder was not that the plague -came, but that Jehovah had so long withheld his -hand! In Hawthorn Church they prayed that the -plague might cease from the afflicted town, but -prayed knowing that the plague had been deserved. -Now that the outstretched black finger had been definitely -withdrawn, the analyst might have found -in the prayer of some—not of all—a flavour of triumph. -Was it not also Jehovah’s doing that the pure -faith was so adorned with health and vindicated?</p> - -<p>The town grew a gloomy place indeed, filled with -apprehension. People viewing it from distant hills -professed to see hanging over it a darkened and -quivering air of its own. The streets had a deserted -look, with fires burning and none around them. The -death-carts went more frequently, and the bells -clanged, clanged. There was a need of physicians, -those in the place being overworked and one smitten. -About the time that the black finger drew back from -the farmhouse, Gilbert Aderhold walked to the town -and offered his services. Thereafter for weeks he was -busied, day and night.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span></p> - -<p>Up in the castle above the town, a kinsman of the -earl’s stayed on after the hurried departure of the -great family to another seat in an untouched countryside. -Heir to a burdened estate and courtier out -of favour, not pleased for reasons of his own to -remove with the earl, and liking for another set of -reasons the very solitariness of the huge old abode, -assured that the infection would not mount the cliff -and pass the castle wood, and constitutionally careless -of danger, he asked leave to stay on, keep ward -with the old housekeeper, the armour in the hall, the -earl’s regiment of books, and his own correspondence -with foreign scholars. He stayed, and for -exercise rode through the country roundabout, and -now and then, to satisfy a philosophic curiosity, -through the town itself. The ideas of the time as to -quarantine were lax enough. The sick were shut -away in the houses, purifying fires burned in the -streets; if you were careful to avoid any who looked -in the faintest degree as though they might be sickening, -life and business might go on. The rider from -the castle, when he came down into the place, carried -with him and put often to his nostrils a quantity -of medicated spices and perfumed grains from the -Orient, carried in a small perforated silver box.</p> - -<p>Riding so through the streets one day he came -upon Aderhold, his foot upon the doorstep of a -marked house. He drew rein. “Ha, the travelling -scholar!—Are you physician here?”</p> - -<p>“Until the trouble is abated.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Black enough trouble!” said the rider. “Toll, toll! -The place is more ghastly than a row of gibbets.”</p> - -<p>“Abroad,” said Aderhold, “I have seen this sickness -in a far worse form. I have hopes that it will not -outlast the winter.”</p> - -<p>The other smelled at his box of spices. “Do you -feel no fear, bending over their beds?”</p> - -<p>Aderhold shook his head. “No. It is my calling.”</p> - -<p>The man on horseback kept ten feet between -them and smelled continually at his silver box, but -for the rest was willing to stay and talk. “That -seems to be it. The soldier will run from the pest, -but face a cannon mouth. The sailor rocks upon a -masthead or boards a Spanish galleon with a cutlass -between his teeth, but a churchyard ghost turns -him into a whimpering child! Your thinker will -scale Olympus and enquire of Jove direct, but the -sight of torn flesh turns him pale. To each his courage -and each his fear! Each a master and each a -slave.”</p> - -<p>“Aye,” said Aderhold briefly, “I know that well.” -He put his hand upon the door behind him. “I must -not stay.”</p> - -<p>The other gathered up the reins. “I am dwelling -at the castle. When the plague is spent, and the air -again is clean and sweet, and old clothing has been -burned and new put on, then, before you travel -farther, come to see me there.—I have faced cannon -and fought a galleon. I would go far to have -speech with an authentic ghost. A brazen head<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span> -would like me well, and I am constantly considering -new Dædalus’ wings. But to enter that house -behind you, and stand over that swollen, ghastly, -loathsomely smelling and moaning thing—no, no! -There I am your abject Eastern slave.”</p> - -<p>He backed his horse farther from the house.</p> - -<p>“Ah,” said Aderhold, “I, too, have a great region -where Fear is my master and sets his foot upon my -neck! I will enter this house, but I make no talk of -Dædalus’ wings—seeing that the neighbours like -it not, and that they have the whip-hand!—When -all’s well I’ll come to the castle.”</p> - -<p>The one rode away, the other entered the plague-touched -house. The first, returning home, found -company, come from the southward, and so reaching -the castle without passing through the town. An -old nobleman, father of the countess, was here, come -unexpectedly from the Court, and having no knowledge -of the family flitting. Now he was in an ill-humour, -indeed, and yet not very fearful of the -plague, and set upon resting his old bones before he -pursued his further journey. Mistress Borrow, the -housekeeper, promised to make him comfortable—there -were servants enough—“And your Lordship -will be glad to know that Sir Richard is here.” With -his lordship was a London physician of note, one that -had sometimes been called to the old Queen. For -years he had doctored his lordship; now, at special -invitation, he was making this journey with him.</p> - -<p>That evening at supper the talk was almost solely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span> -of the plague. The physician had had experience in -London; he had written learnedly upon the subject, -and was reckoned an authority. He talked of preventives -and plague-waters, and hoped that while, -for his lordship’s sake, he should not think of -closely exposing himself, he might yet, with proper -precautions, descend into the town and observe the -general appearance of matters. He would be glad to -give to the authorities or to the physicians in the -place any advice in his power,—and then he fell to -the capon, the venison pasty, and the canary. The -old nobleman asked Sir Richard how he should get -word to William Carthew, living beyond Hawthorn -Village, of his presence at the castle. It seemed that -there was some tie of old service a generation agone,—Carthew’s -father had owed a captaincy and other -favours to the nobleman,—and now that he was -dead the present squire and justice always came -dutifully to see the great man upon the occasions -when he was at the castle. “They tell me that he -hath turned Puritan—or rather that his younger -brother hath turned Puritan and draggeth William -with him. A pack of crop-eared wretches! I should -have thought better of John Carthew’s son. I wish -to see him just to tell him so.”</p> - -<p>“One of the grooms shall be sent to Hawthorn -to-morrow morning, sir. If your man be afraid of -infection he may ride around the town and come in -from this side.”</p> - -<p>But the Carthews—for both brothers would ride<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span> -from Hawthorn to the castle—were not afraid of -infection. The older was unimaginative. As long as -you did not touch nor go too near, you were safe -enough. The younger brooded on other things, and -was sincerely careless of any danger riding through -the town might present. Neither was averse to seeing -how the stricken place might look. The younger, -who, truly, greatly influenced his brother, came with -him primarily that he might be at hand if the castle, -which was prelatical, opened upon religion.</p> - -<p>It opened, but only in the person of the old nobleman. -Sir Richard sat a little to one side in the great -hall where the armour hung and listened as to three -actors in the same play. The physician standing by -the fire faintly shrugged his shoulders. The nobleman -ridiculed and vituperated, the younger Puritan—for -the elder was no match for his lordship—came -back with verse and Scripture. Finally the -first was reduced to “Insolent!” and a fine, foaming -rage. Squire Carthew plucked his brother’s sleeve. -“No, no, Harry! Don’t go so far—”</p> - -<p>The younger Carthew made a stiff bow to his -lordship and stood silent. He had answered, he -knew, boldly and well, and it was much to him now -to answer well and know it, to feel that he had been -God Almighty’s able champion. In subtle ways it -tended to balance matters. It eased the sore and -fearful feeling within, the anguished sensation that -he was slipping, slipping, that the hand of Grace -was trembling beneath him....</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span></p> - -<p>The quarrel was too deep for any reconciliation. -The old nobleman advanced no olive branches. -Instead, with a “Fare you well, gentlemen! If this -goes much further in England there’ll be hangings -and beheadings!” he rose from his cushioned chair -and stalked from the hall. Sir Richard offered food -and canary, but the two Carthews misliked his suavity, -and the younger, at least, meant to keep no -terms of any kind. They refused entertainment. -They must needs at once return to Hawthorn.</p> - -<p>“As you please, gentlemen!—I am glad to know -that the sickness has not touched your neighbourhood.”</p> - -<p>The physician now came forward; they all stood -about the great table in the hall. “You are lucky if -it reaches you not,” said the London doctor. “I -understand that you are not more than six miles -away. But in great cities I have seen it skip one -parish and slay its hundreds all around. For some -reason the folk just there were more resistive.”</p> - -<p>A servant entering with a message from the old -nobleman, he turned aside to receive it.</p> - -<p>“Nay,” said the younger Carthew with sternness, -“the plague falls where God would have it fall, and -falls not where he is willing to spare. He saith to his -Angel, ‘Smite here!’ or He saith, ‘Pass me by this -door!’—and where is the resistance of man that -you prate of? As well might the worm resist the -master of the vineyard’s treading foot!”</p> - -<p>Sir Richard looked at him curiously. “Of course!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span> -of course! Poor worm!” There fell a silence, then -the last speaker, unthinkingly, merely to make talk -to the great door before which stood the visitors’ -horses, brought forward Aderhold’s presence in the -town. “Hawthorn hath played the Samaritan in -one person—though, I believe, indeed, that he lives -beyond the village. You’ve given a good leech. I -saw him yesterday morning in the town, going from -sick to sick.”</p> - -<p>The squire spoke. “You mean one Gilbert Aderhold? -Yes, he is a leech. But Hawthorn sent him -not—”</p> - -<p>The London physician, returning at the moment, -caught the name, “Gilbert Aderhold!—What! -I’ve wondered more than once what became of the -man—if, indeed, you speak of the same—”</p> - -<p>“A tall, quiet man,” said Sir Richard. “A -thinker who has travelled—”</p> - -<p>“It has a sound of him,” said the physician. He -somewhat despised the two country gentlemen, so he -addressed himself exclusively to Sir Richard. As to -what followed, it must be said that he spoke alike -without malice and without forethought. Indifferentist -himself, dulled by personal vanity and complacence -of position, and with a knowledge at least of -the tolerant-mindedness of the person to whom he -spoke, he possibly took not into consciousness at all -the very different nature of the two who might be -listening, nor realized that the man of whom he spoke -dwelled in their bailiwick and not in the town. At<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span> -any rate, he spoke on with vivacity. “A man of -abilities who should have risen—studied in Paris—was -for a time in the Duke of ——’s household. -Then what must he do but grow atheist and begin -to write and teach! ‘The God of Isaac and Jacob, -Isaac and Jacob’s idea of God. God the vast abstraction, -like and differing with all times and peoples. -The Bible not writ by the finger of God, but -a book of Eastern wisdom with much that is gold, -and much that is not.—No Fall of Man as therein -told.—Salvation out of the depths of yourself and -not by gift of another.—No soul can be bathed -clean by another’s blood.’—His book,” said the -physician, “was burned in an open place in Paris by -the common hangman, and he himself lay a long -while in prison and was hardly dealt with, nay, just -escaped with life—which he might not have done -but for the Duke of ——, who got him forth from -France with a letter to Sir Robert Cecil, and—seeing -that I had brought his Grace up from an illness -which he had when he was in England—one -from his secretary to me. But naturally neither Sir -Robert nor I could do aught—”</p> - -<p>Sir Richard, his brow clouded, stopped him with a -gesture. “You caught my interest and held me fast—but -I should have checked you at once! Now—” -He bit his lip, his brows drawn together with deep -vexation.</p> - -<p>The two men from Hawthorn were standing stone -still. In the elder’s face, at once stolid and peremptory,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> -was only single-minded amazement and wrath. -What was this that Justice Carthew and all Hawthorn -had been harbouring? A Jesuit spy would -have been bad enough—but atheist!—But the -younger was more complex, and in him a number of -impulses were working. He left it to the elder to -speak, who did so, explosively. “Atheist! No one -hath thought well of the man of late—but atheist!—I -will promise you, doctor—I will promise -you, Sir Richard—”</p> - -<p>“Nay,” said Sir Richard, no longer with suavity, -“what I would have you promise, that I know you -will not!” He shook himself like a great dog. -“Unhappy!”</p> - -<p>The two Carthews rode down the castle hill and -through the town where people went dully to and -fro with Fear in company. There rose the pungent -smell of burning wood, a church bell made a slow -and measured clangour. They passed between tall, -gloomy, jutting houses, passed the prison with the -stocks and pillory, and the great church with the -sculptured portal, wound down to the river, and -crossed the arched bridge. Before them rolled the -yet wintry country. Mounting a hill, they saw on -the horizon a purple-grey line that was Hawthorn -Forest.</p> - -<p>The younger Carthew spoke. “It comes back to -me.... That night at the Rose Tavern when he so -suddenly appeared beside old Hardwick.... Master -Anthony Mull, of Sack Hall, who was travelling<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span> -with us, appeared to recognize him and flew out -against him.... Wait a moment!—his very words -will come back. He said—’Black sorcerer and -devil’s friend!’”</p> - -<p>That afternoon a serving-man brought to a -house at the foot of the castle hill a letter to be -passed on by a safe hand to the physician from -Hawthorn. It came into Aderhold’s hand as dusk -was falling. He broke the seal and read by the light -of one of the street fires. The letter—no lengthy -one—came from his friend of the hawk and the -silver box. It told him what the London physician -had betrayed, though without malice, and to whom. -It argued that it might be well to quit as quickly as -possible this part of the country, or even to go forth -for a time from England. It offered a purse and a -horse; also, if it were wished for, a letter of commendation -to the captain of a ship then lying at -anchor at the nearest port, which captain, his own -vessel being for longer voyages, would get him passage -in some other ship touching at a Dutch port—“Amsterdam -being to-day as safe as any place for a -thinker—where no place is safe.” The letter ended -with “The younger Carthew will move, no fear! -Then, my friend, move first.”—An answer was to -be left at the house at the foot of the hill.</p> - -<p>Aderhold mechanically folded the letter and -placed it in the breast of his doublet. The fire was -burning in an almost deserted street. Beside it was -a bench where an old tender of fires sat at times and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span> -nodded in the warmth. He was not here now. Aderhold -moved to the bench and sat down. He sat -leaning forward, his hands clasped and hanging, his -head bowed. After a time he sighed, straightened -himself, and turning upon the bench looked about -him. It was a gusty twilight with now and again a -dash of rain. He looked up and down the solemn -street. Some of the houses stood dark, those who -had lived in them dead or fled. Behind the windows -of others candles burned and shadows passed. This -house he knew was stricken, and this and that. -Here it was a child, here a young man or woman, -here older folk. In more than one house there were -many cases, a whole family stricken.... As he sat -he heard the first cart of the night roll into the street, -and a distant, toneless cry, “Bring out your dead!”</p> - -<p>He rose and stood with a solemn and wide gesture -of his hands. He waited a moment longer by the -fire, then turned and went from this street into the -next, where there lived behind his shop an old stationer -and seller of books with whom he had made -acquaintance. Here he begged pen and ink and -paper, and when he had them, wrote, at no great -length, an answer to the letter in his doublet. The -next morning he left it at the house indicated, -whence in due time it was taken by the serving-man -and carried to Sir Richard at the castle. The letter -spoke of strong gratitude, “but it befits not my -calling to leave the town now.”</p> - -<p>The days lagged by in the stricken place. Then,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span> -suddenly, the black finger shot out again and -touched a house beyond the midway farm, so much -nearer than it to Hawthorn Village.... A week of -held breath and the finger went forward again. This -time it touched a house in Hawthorn.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER XII</h2> - -<p class="pch">HERON’S COTTAGE</p> - -<p class="pn1"><span class="smcap">It</span> was early spring again, and on the fruit trees pale -emerald buds of yet unfolded leaves. The blackbirds -came in flocks to the ploughed fields. But this year -there were many fields that were not ploughed; -dead men could not plough, nor those who had been -to death’s door and were coming halting, halting -back.</p> - -<p>Joan sat in her kitchen, on a low stool by the -hearth. The room was clean, with shafts of sunlight -slanting in. But her wheel was pushed back into a -corner, and there lacked other signs of industry. -She sat still and listless, bent over, her cheek resting -upon her knees, and with her forefinger she made -idle marks and letters in the ashes. The fire was -smouldering out, the place seemed deadly still.</p> - -<p>There came a knock upon the door. She raised her -head, and sat with a frozen look, listening. After a -minute the knock was repeated. Rising, she moved -noiselessly across the floor to the window, and, standing -so that she could not be seen, looked out. The -rigour passed from her face; she drew a breath of -relief and went and opened the door.</p> - -<p>The sunshine flooded in and in the midst of it -stood Aderhold. He looked at her quietly and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span> -kindly. “I came again but to see if you were well -and lacked naught.”</p> - -<p>“I lack naught, thank you, sir,” said Joan. “And -I am well—O me, O me, I would that it had taken -me, too! O father, father!”</p> - -<p>She leaned against the wall, shaken with dry sobs. -The fit did not last; she was resolute enough. She -straightened herself. “I’ve done what you told me -to. Yesterday I washed and cleaned and let the sun -in everywhere, and burned in the room the powder -you gave me. Everything is clean—and lonely. -No, I don’t feel badly anywhere. I feel terribly -strong, as though I would live to be an old woman.... -I miss father—I miss father!”</p> - -<p>“It looks so clean and bright,” said Aderhold, -“and your cat purring there on the hearth. Your -father went very quickly, and without much suffering. -His presence will come back to you, and you -will take comfort in it. You will feel it in this -room, and upon this doorstep, and out here among -the fruit trees, and under the stars at night.”</p> - -<p>“Aye,” said Joan, “I think it too. But now—” -She stood beside him on the doorstep, looking out -past the budding trees to the gate and the misty -green twisted path that led at last to the village -road. Overhead drove a fleecy drift of clouds with -islands of blue. “All last night the countryside -mourned low and wailed. It was the wind, but I -knew it was the other too! It is sad for miles and -miles to be so woeful.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span></p> - -<p>“The sickness is greatly lessening. By the time -the spring is strongly here it will be over and Hawthorn -beginning to forget.—You have been here -now three days alone. Has no one come to enquire -or help?”</p> - -<p>“Mother Spuraway from beyond the mill-race -came. No one else.”</p> - -<p>“In a time like this all fear all. But presently -friends will find out friends again.”</p> - -<p>“It is not that way that I am lonely,” said Joan. -“There are some that I care not if they never -come.”</p> - -<p>He had his round to go. The sickness in the town -dwindling, he had come back, when it broke over -Hawthorn, to the Oak Grange. Since then he had -gone far and near, wherever it struck down the -poorer sort. As he turned from the cottage door, -Joan stepped, too, upon the flagged path, and they -moved side by side toward the gate, between the -lines of green lance-heads the daffodils were thrusting -above the soil. They moved in silence, almost of -a height, two simply, almost poorly dressed figures, -each with its load of sorrow and care for the morrow. -And yet they were not old, and about them was the -low ecstatic murmur of winter swiftening into spring.</p> - -<p>“Do you remember,” asked Aderhold, “that day -when we chanced to meet in the forest and Master -Harry Carthew came upon us?”</p> - -<p>“Aye,” said Joan, “I remember.”</p> - -<p>“Since then we have neither met nor spoken together<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span> -until last week when your father was stricken -and you watched for me coming from the village.—And -now to-day I come only for this moment and -will come no more.—Have you no close friends nor -kindred?”</p> - -<p>“They are buried with father.... I mean to stay -on here and spin flax and keep myself. And if—I -mean to stay.” Her hand went out to touch the -eglantine growing by the beehives. “I love it and I -mean to stay.”</p> - -<p>Aderhold looked beyond at the wavy green path -and the massed trees of the forest. He, too, loved -this country. He had thought much here—once -or twice the light had shone through. But he was -ready now to go. Just as soon as there was no more -sick, just as soon as the plague was gone, he meant to -steal from the Oak Grange and Hawthorn countryside. -He and Joan came to the little gate, and he -went out of it, then turning for a moment looked -back at the thatched cottage, the pleasant beehives, -the fruit trees that ere long would put forth a mist of -bloom. Joan stood with a sorrowful face, but grey-eyed, -vital. Her hand rested upon the worn wood. -He laid his own upon it, lightly, for one moment. -“Good-bye,” he said, “Mistress Friendly-Soul!”</p> - -<p>She stood in the pale sunshine until he was gone -from sight, then turned and went back to her -kitchen. She must bake bread; there was nothing for -her to eat in the cottage. She must get water from -the well. She took her well-bucket, went forth and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span> -brought it back brimming. From the faggot pile she -fed the fire, then brought to the table coarse flour -and other matters for the bread, mixed and worked, -moulded and set to bake. And all the time she tried -to feel that her father was sitting there, in the settle -corner. She made the table clear again, then looked -at her wheel. But she did not feel like spinning; her -heart was burdened again; she sat down on the stool -by the fire and bowed her head in her arms. “Day -after day and day after day,” she said; “day after -day and day after day.” She rocked herself. “And -a powerful man that I hate to come again and yet -again to trouble me, and father not here.... Day -after day and day after day.... And I know not -why it is, but I have no friends. They’ve turned -against me, and I know not why.... Day after day—” -She sat with buried head and rocked herself -slowly to and fro. Save for the youth in her form -and the thick, pale bronze of her braided hair, she -might have seemed Mother Spuraway, or Marget -Primrose, or any other old and desolate woman. -She rocked herself, and the faggot burned apart, and -the cat stretched itself in the warmth.</p> - -<p>From outside the cottage came a thin calling. -“<i>Joan! Joan! Oh, Joan!</i>”</p> - -<p>Joan lifted her head, listened a moment, then rose -and opened the door. “<i>Joan! Joan! Oh, Joan!</i>” -She stepped without and saw who it was,—Alison -Inch and Cecily Lukin calling to her from the green -path well beyond the gate. They would come at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span> -first no nearer. The plague had struck in the Lukin -cottage no less than in Heron’s, and for weeks it had -closely neighboured Alison Inch and her mother. -But Joan must be made to feel comrades’ terror of -her. “Joan! Joan! Have you got it yet?—We -want but to see if you’re living!”</p> - -<p>With a gesture of anger Joan turned to reënter -the cottage.</p> - -<p>But Alison did not wish that. “Joan! Joan! We -were laughing. We’re not afraid if you don’t come -very close.—I’ve got something to tell you. See! -I’m not afraid.”</p> - -<p>Alison came to the gate, Cecily with her. Joan no -longer liked Alison, and with Cecily she had never -had much acquaintance. But they were women and -young, and the loneliness was terrible about her. -She went halfway up the path toward them. The -grey and white cat came from the cottage and followed -her.</p> - -<p>Alison regarded her with a thin, flushed, shrewish -face and an expression lifted, enlarged, and darkened -beyond what might have seemed possible to -her nature. But Alison had drunk deep from an acrid -spring that drew in turn from a deep, perpetual -fount. She spoke in a thin and cutting voice. -“Watching and weeping haven’t taken the rose -away.—What are you going to do now, Joan?”</p> - -<p>“I do not think,” said Joan, “that it is necessary -to tell thee.” She looked past her to Cecily. “They -say your sister died. I am sorry.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span></p> - -<p>But Alison had put poison into Cecily’s mind. -“Yes, she died. They do say that you would not be -sorry if more of us died. Why people like you and—and -Mother Spuraway should wish harm to us -others—”</p> - -<p>“What are you talking of?” said Joan. “I wish -no harm to any—”</p> - -<p>Cecily was an impish small piece with no especial -evil in her save a teasing devil. “Oh, they say that -you and a black man understand each other! Some -boys told me—”</p> - -<p>“Nay, that’s naught, Cis!” said Alison impatiently. -She came closer to the gate, and Joan, as -though drawn against her will, approached from her -side. “Joan—nay, don’t come any nearer, Joan—”</p> - -<p>“Yes?”</p> - -<p>“There’s one ill at the squire’s house. Ah!” cried -Alison. “Do you look joyful?”</p> - -<p>“No—no!” stammered Joan.</p> - -<p>Taken by surprise, shaken and unstable as she was -to-day, she gave back a step, lifted her hands to her -forehead. As for Alison—Alison had not expected -Joan to look joyful. She had spoken, burning her -own heart, to make Joan feel the hot iron, knowing -that the pang she gave would not be lasting, for -truly it was but one of the maidservants at the great -house that was stricken and not that person of overshadowing -importance. She had believed with all -her heart that it would smite Joan to the heart until -she told her true—and now there had been in her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span> -face an awful joy, though at once it had shrunk back -and something piteous had come instead. But it was -the first look with which Alison was concerned. -There went through her a keen hope like a knife-blade. -Perhaps he no longer liked Joan!—perhaps -that made Joan angry, hurting her vanity—so, -perhaps she would have liked to hear that he was -sick of the plague! Alison stood astare, revolving -Joan’s look.</p> - -<p>Cecily, who had never come before so close to -Heron’s cottage, gazed about her. “And Katherine -Scott says there’s something ‘no canny’ about the -bees in your beehives. She says she had them while -you were away to the castle, and they did naught -for her and made, besides, her own bees idle and sick. -But she says they make honey for you, great combs -of it—”</p> - -<p>“There is none that is sick at the squire’s house,” -said Alison in a strange voice, “but Agnes, Madam -Carthew’s woman. They’ve taken her from the -house and put her in a room by the stable, and the -family goes freely forth.—Why did you look as you -were glad, Joan?”</p> - -<p>“If I did, God forgive me!” said Joan. “In the -deep of me there is no ill-wishing.—Presently, the -leech says, it will be all safe here, as, indeed, it’s -clean and sun-washed and safe to-day. Then I hope -you’ll both come to see me—”</p> - -<p>Cecily gave a gibing, elfin laugh. “Are you going -to live here all alone—like a witch?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span></p> - -<p>The grey and white cat had advanced beyond -Joan and now stood upon the sunny path between -the daffodil points. What happened none of the -three saw; perhaps a dog crossed the track behind -the two visitors, perhaps the creature recognized -human hostility—be that as it may, the cat suddenly -arched its back, its hair rose, its mouth -opened.</p> - -<p>“Ah-h!” cried Cecily. “Look at her cat!”</p> - -<p>A curious inspiration, not of light, passed like a -cloud-shadow over Alison’s face. “It doesn’t like -what you said, Cis! It’s her familiar.—Come -away! We’d best be going.”</p> - -<p>They turned. Lightning came against them from -Joan’s grey eyes. “Yes, go! And come not here -again! Do you hear?—Come not here again!” Her -voice followed them up the green path. “Come not -here again—”</p> - -<p>The next day she went to get wood from the edge -of the forest. She had gathered her load of faggots, -and was sitting upon them, resting, in her hand a -fallen bird’s nest, when Will the smith’s son happened -that way. The two had known each other to -speak to in a friendly way for many a year; it used -to be that, coming or going from the Grange, he -might at any time stop for a minute before the cottage -for a crack with old Heron and maybe with -Joan herself. That time had come to an end with -Joan and her father’s going to the castle; when they -came back he had been, as it were, afraid of new<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span> -graces and manners. Moreover, old Master Hardwick -had presently died, and so Will left the employment -of the Grange and had little need any -more to come and go by Hawthorn Forest. It -might be that, save at church, they had not seen -each other for months. Moreover, he had been away -to the nearest port.</p> - -<p>Now he greeted her with friendliness and an -honest-awkward speech of sorrow for old Heron’s -death. “He was a good man and, fegs! so learned!—Am -sorry for thee, Joan. And what will’t do -now?”</p> - -<p>Joan turned the grey and empty nest in her -hands. “I do not know,” she said drearily; then, -with a backward fling of her shoulders and a lift of -courage, “The cottage’s mine. And I always sell -the flax I spin. I’ll bide and spin and keep the -place.”</p> - -<p>Will shook his head compassionately. “A lass -like thou—! In no time thou’dst be talked of and -called ill names. Either thou must take service or -marry—”</p> - -<p>Joan turned upon him heavy-lidded grey orbs. -“Why should I marry or be a serving-woman if I -wish neither, and can keep myself?—Oh, I like not -the way we’ve made this world!” She turned the -nest again. “This thing of ill names—Well, ill -names do not kill.”</p> - -<p>Will stood, biting a piece of thorn. “You’d see -how it would turn out. No one would believe—”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span></p> - -<p>He looked at her with rustic meditativeness. He -was slow and country-living; he had no great acquaintance -with Alison or Cecily, and it had never -occurred to him to mark Master Harry Carthew, -where the squire’s brother rode or whom his looks -pursued. He had heard of the vintner in the town, -and had dimly supposed that Joan would marry -him, or maybe the new huntsman or some other -fine-feathered person at the castle. But now the -plague had swept the town, and the vintner might -be of those taken—and here was old Heron gone. -He looked at her again, and the hand that held the -piece of thorn against his lips began to shake a little. -It occurred to him more strongly than it had done -before that she was a fair woman—and then, -Heron’s cottage. There was a tiny plot of ground, -the cow, some poultry. As things went, she had a -good dowry. Will the smith’s son might go farther -and fare worse. It was not the right time, all Hawthorn -being so gloomy and everybody afraid, and -his own heart knocking at times against his side with -fear. But it wouldn’t hurt just to drop a hint. He -moistened his lips. “Joan,” he said; “Joan—”</p> - -<p>And then, by the perversity of her fortune, Joan -herself shook him from this base. She lifted sombre -eyes, still turning the little grey nest about in her -hands. “Why do you think we had the plague? -The minister preached that it was sent against the -town for its false doctrine, and we gave thanks that -we were not as the town.... And then in a little<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span> -while it was upon us, and my father, who was a good -man, took it and died....”</p> - -<p>Gloom that had lifted this bright afternoon on the -forest edge settled again. Will the smith’s son had a -strong taste for the supernatural, all the emotional -in him finding that vent. It could grow to light up -with strange lightnings and transform every humdrum -corner of his mind. He liked to discuss these -matters and feel a wind of terror prick his temples -cold. He spoke oracularly, having, indeed, listened -to talk at the sexton’s the night before. “There’s always -an Evil Agent behind any pest, or a comet or -a storm that wrecks ships or blows down chimneys. -At times God uses the Evil Agent to punish the presumptuous -with—as He might give Satan leave to -spot with plague the town over yonder, seeing that -if it could it would have the old mass-priests back! -And at other times He gives the Evil Agent leave to -prick and try his chosen people that they may turn -like a wauling babe and cling the closer to Him. -And again there may be one patch of weed in the -good corn and Satan couching and holding his Sabbat -there. In which case God will send plagues of -Egypt, one after the other, until every soul wearing -the Devil’s livery is haled forth.—Now,” said Will, -and he laid it off with the sprig of thorn, “Hawthorn -is for the pure faith of the Holy Scriptures, so we -haven’t the plague for the reason the town hath it.—Again, -put case that so we’re to love the Lord the -more. Now Hawthorn and all to the north of it is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span> -known for religion. I’ve been a traveller,” said Will -with unction, “and I know how we’re looked on, -clear from here to the sea, and held up to the ungodly! -Master Clement’s got a name that sounds to -the wicked like the trump of doom and Master -Harry Carthew isn’t far behind him—What did -you say?”</p> - -<p>“I said naught,” said Joan.</p> - -<p>Will closed his exposition. “Now it may be that -God wisheth to prick up Hawthorn to fresh zeal, -and, indeed, the sexton holds that it is so that Master -Clement interprets the matter. But it seemed to -me and the tinker, who was there talking, too, that -the third case is the likelier and that there are some -ill folk among us!” Will dropped the bit of thorn. -“It’s the more likely because there’s another kind of -mischief going around and growing as the plague -dies off. I know myself of three plough-horses gone -lame in one night, and Hodgson’s cow dying without -rhyme or reason, and a child at North-End Farm -falling into fits and talking of a dog that runs in and -out of the room, but no one else can see it. The -tinker”—Will spoke with energy—“the tinker -has come not long since over the border from Scotland. -He says that if Hawthorn was Scotland we’d -have had old Mother Spuraway and maybe others -in the pennywinkis and the caschielawis before -this!”</p> - -<p>Joan rose and lifted her bundle of faggots to her -shoulders. The grey bird-nest she set between two<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span> -boughs of the thorn tree. “What are the pennywinkis -and the caschielawis?”</p> - -<p>“The one’s your thumbscrew,” said Will, “and -the other’s a hollow iron case where they set your -leg and build a fire beneath.”</p> - -<p>Joan turned her face toward the cottage. Her old -acquaintance walked beside her. It was afternoon -and there was over everything a tender, flickering, -charming light. It made the new grass emerald, of -the misting trees veil on veil of soft, smiling magic. -Primroses and violets bloomed as though dropped -from immortal hands. The blue vault of air rose -height on height and so serene and kind....</p> - -<p>Joan spoke in a smothered voice. “I would -believe in a good God.”</p> - -<p>The young countryman beside her had gone on in -mind with the tinker and his talk. “What did you -say, Joan?”</p> - -<p>“I said naught,” said Joan.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER XIII</h2> - -<p class="pch">HAWTHORN CHURCH</p> - -<p class="pn1"><span class="smcap">Town</span> and village and all the country roundabout -were growing clean of the plague. Day by day the -evil lessened, the sickness stole away. It left its -graves, and among those whose loss was personal -its mood of grief. At large there was still a kind of -sullen fear, a tension of the nerves, a readiness to -attend to any cry of “Wolf!” The wolf might come -no more in the guise of the plague, but there were -other damages and terrors. All Hawthorn region -was in a mood to discover them.</p> - -<p>It came Sunday. The danger, at least, of congregating -together seemed to have rolled away. -Comfort remained, comfort of the crowd, of feeling -people warm about you, gloomy comfort of -“Eh, sirs!” and shakings of the head. Hawthorn, -village and neighbourhood, flocked to church. Going, -the people drew into clusters. The North-End -Farm folk had a large cluster, and there the shaking -of the head was over the possessed boy. But -the widow whose cow was dead and the waggoner -whose horses were lamed had their groups, too, and -the largest group of all came compactly from the -lower end of the village, past the green and the -pond and the stocks and the Sabbath-closed ale-house,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span> -with the tinker from Scotland talking in the -midst of it.</p> - -<p>Dark stone, gaunt and ancient, rather small than -large, Hawthorn Church rose among yew trees. -Within was barer than without. What of antique -carving could be broken away was broken away, -what could be whitewashed was whitewashed, what -of austerity could be injected was injected. The -Act of Uniformity loomed over England like a -writing in the sky; there must be and was use of the -book of Common Prayer. But parishes minded -like Hawthorn used it with all possible reserves. -Where matters could be pared they were pared to -the quick; all exfoliation was done away with. As -far as was possible in an England where Presbyterianism -yet sat in the shadow of the Star Chamber -and the Independents had not arisen, idolatrousness -was excluded. Only the sermon was not pared. -Sunday by Sunday minister and people indemnified -themselves with the sermon.—You could not speak -against the King; except in metaphor you could not -speak against the Apostolic Succession; there were a -number of things you could not speak against unless -you wished to face gaol or pillory or worse. Because -of this the things that you could speak against -were handled with an added violence. The common -outer foe received the cudgellings you could not bestow -within the house. The Devil was mightily dealt -with in pulpits such as this of Hawthorn, the Devil -and his ministers. The Devil was invisible; even the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span> -most materializing mind did not often get a glimpse -of him, though such a thing was possible and had of -course happened: witness Martin Luther and others. -But his ministers—his ministers! They were many -and palpable....</p> - -<p>Hawthorn Church was filled. They sat very still, -men and women and children. They were peasants -and yeomen, small tradespeople, a very few of the -clerkly caste, one or two families of gentry. The -only great enclosed pew was that belonging by prescription -to Carthew House. The squire, the squire’s -wife, his young son, and the squire’s brother sat -there, where the force of the sermon could reach -them first. Quite at the back of the church sat Gilbert -Aderhold, a quiet, dark figure beside an old, -smocked farmer. Joan sat where she had been -wont to sit with her father, halfway down the -church, just in front of Alison Inch and her mother. -It was a dark day, the air hot, heavy, and oppressive, -drawing to a storm.</p> - -<p>Master Thomas Clement came into the pulpit -wearing a black gown. He opened his Geneva Bible -and laid it straight before him. He turned the hourglass, -then lifting his hands to the lowering sky he -smote them together, and in a loud, solemn and -echoing voice read from the book before him, “<i>If -there arise among you a prophet or a dreamer of -dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder. And the -sign or the wonder come to pass whereof he spake to -thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, that thou hast<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span> -not known, and let us serve them.... That prophet or -that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death; because he -hath spoken to turn you away from the Lord your God.... -And all Israel shall hear and fear and shall do no -more any such wickedness as this is among you....</i>”</p> - -<p>“<i>... There shall not be found among you any one -that ... useth divination, or an observer of times, or an -enchanter, or a witch, or a consulter with familiar -spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.</i>”</p> - -<p>He ceased to read, and with another gesture of -his long, thin hands, began to preach. He had a -peculiar power and calibre had Master Thomas -Clement. He stood in his black gown, a small man -with a pale face; then his dire vision came upon him -and it was as though his form gained height and -dilated. He burned like a flame, a wind-tossed flame, -burning <i>blue</i>. When he spoke his words came with a -rushing weight. His figure bent toward the people, -his lean hands quivered above his head, gesturing -against the dark concave of the roof. The roof -might have been an open, stormy sky, the pulpit a -rock upon some plain of assemblage, the preacher a -gaunt, half-clad Israelite shrilling out to the Hebrew -multitude the rede of their lawgivers. <i>Thou shalt not -suffer doubt to live! Thou shalt endure no speech of -more or other paths than this one. He that differeth, he -shall die!</i></p> - -<p>But it was not Sinai and some thousands of years -ago and an Asiatic tribe struggling back from Egypt -to some freehold of its own, or Asiatic lawgivers<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span> -building a careful theocracy. It was Europe,—it -was England and the seventeenth century,—and -still men like this stood in fiery sincerity and became -mouthpieces for that people and its history and its -laws. The order to Judah and Simeon and Levi -rolled through the ages like never-cooling lava, withering -and whelming vineyards of thought. <i>Thou -shalt not suffer doubt to live. He that differeth, he shall -die!</i>—And a thousand thousand pale shapes might -rise to the inner eye and speak to the inner ear. -“<i>We died.</i>”</p> - -<p>Aderhold sat still, far back in Hawthorn Church. -In his own mind he saw that he was on the edge -of the abyss. He doubted much if he would escape.... -The old farmer sitting, blue-smocked, beside -him, his watery eyes fixed upon the minister, broke -now and again into a mutter of repetition and comment. -“Aye, aye! The misbeliever to perish for -idolatry.... Of course he blasphemes—the misbeliever -blasphemes.... Aye, aye! ‘Why,’ and -‘Wherefore,’ the Devil’s own syllables.... Aye, -aye! Unbelief and sorcery go together.... Aye, -now we’re at fire in this world and everlasting, lasting -fire to come!”</p> - -<p>The preacher had before him a people who had -come through a narrow strait and a valley of the -shadow, gathered together in a mood of strained -nerves, of twitches and starts aside, of a readiness to -take panic. The day was dark with heat and oppression, -a sense of hush before tempest. It was a day on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span> -which it was easy to awaken emotion. The faces of -the people showed pale in the dusk, breathing became -laboured. At last it grew that men and women -looked aside with something like a shudder and a -sigh in the dimness. It was as though they looked -to see a serpent’s head, fanged and crowned, lifting -itself in the gloom from monstrous coils. Aderhold -saw the slow turning of eyes in his direction.</p> - -<p>He thought swiftly. He had served many in this -congregation. Since, in the winter-time, his eyes had -been opened, he knew of the drifting talk of his -hoarding gold, of his practising alchemy there in the -dark Oak Grange, alchemy, and perhaps worse. -Even after his return from the plague-stricken town, -even in his going through Hawthorn countryside -from house to house where there were sick, helping, -serving, even then he had seen doubtful looks, had -known his aid taken hurriedly, as it were secretly -and grudgingly. But all had not done so. There had -been those too simple and too suffering and sorrowful -for that, and there had been those whose minds -seemed not to have taken the dye. There were some -in this church of whom, in the years he had dwelt in -this country, he had grown fond; folk that of their -own bent felt for him liking and kindness.... But -he did not deceive himself. He knew of none that -would stand before this parching and withering -wind. Heretofore the talk might have been idle -talk, but now it was evident that Master Clement -had at his shaken finger-ends the history in France<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span> -of Gilbert Aderhold. Friends! By what multitude -of written words, of hearsay and legend—by what -considerable amount of personal observation did -he know how friends fell away from the denounced -dreamer of dreams!... Poor friends! He felt no -rise of bitterness against them. They would not -have fallen away in physical battle; they would -have stood many a strain, perhaps all but this. -This was not to cow the blood; it was to cow mind -and the immortal spirit. To face for a friend a wolf, -a lion, or an earthly angered King, that was well!—but -to face for a friend an angered God, to save -him not from hell-fire and to be yourself whelmed, -remediless, for eternity! Few there were who could -inwardly frame the question, “Is He angered?” or -“What is He that can be so angered?” or “You -who would silence this man with the silence of death, -are you beyond doubt the spokesmen of God and -Eternity? Are you, after all, <i>God’s</i> Executioners?” -But they said that they were, and the human mind -was clay to believe.... Aderhold looked over the -church and thought he saw none who would not be -terrified aside.</p> - -<p>Well! he asked those questions and other questions. -Mind and moral nature rose in him and stood. -But he knew that his body would betray him if it -could. Highly strung, very sensitive to pain, he possessed -an imagination and memory vivid to paint or -to bring back all manner of pangs and shrinkings of -the earthly frame. No detail of any Calvary but in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span> -some wise he knew and feared it. He felt the cold -sweat dew his temples and break out upon the backs -of his hands. He felt the nausea that numbed and -withered the brain and brought the longing for -death....</p> - -<p>Not in the beginning, the middle, or the ending of -his white-heated discourse did the minister call the -name of Gilbert Aderhold or say the Oak Grange. -The invective, the “Lo, this is he that troubleth -Israel!” only drew in circles, closer, closer, until -there was no one there who did not know who was -meant. The tremendous accusation was of Atheism, -but in and out there tolled like a lesser bell, -<i>Sorcery! Sorcery!</i> The withdrawing light, the hot, -small, vagrant breaths of air, announcers of the -onward rolling storm, the darkened hollow of the -building with the whitewashed walls glimmering -pale, the faces lifted from the benches, the square -Hall pew, the high pulpit and the black sounding-board -and the black figure with the lifted arms and -the death-like shaken hands, and in the back of the -church, all knew, even if they could not see him, the -man who had made pact with the Devil.... A -woman fainted; a child began a frightened, whimpering -crying. The sands had quite run out from the -upper half of the hourglass....</p> - -<p>Aderhold, close to the door, was the first of the -congregation to step from the church into the open -air. It would seem that those near him held back, -so as to let the fearful thing forth and out. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span> -churchyard path stretched bare before him, between -the yews to the mossed gate, and so forth -from the immediate pale. There came as yet no -challenge or molestation. He had looked for this; -when all had risen and he with them, it had been -with an inward bracing to meet at the door a writ of -arrest. He looked to see the Hawthorn constable. -But he was not at the door, or out upon the path, -or at the gate.... The storm was at hand, with -clouds heavy and dark as the yew trees and with a -mutter of thunder. As he reached the village street, -raindrops touched his face. Behind him the churchyard -was astir with people, murmuring and dark. -He wrapped his cloak about him, pulled his hat -down against the rain, and faced homeward. Almost -immediately, the church being at the village -end, the cloud-shadowed country was about him.</p> - -<p>He walked rapidly for half a mile, then halted and -stood in the wind and rain, trying to think it out. It -occurred to him that he might turn back through the -fields and passing the village come out on the highway -and strike southward to the town and the castle. -He knew not if his friend of the hawk were yet at the -castle. And if he were not?—and if he were?...</p> - -<p>There was that at the Oak Grange which must be -considered. His book—there in the quiet room -behind the cupboard’s oaken door, all his writing -lying there—that which he was trying to put down. -It turned him decisively from the town and the bare -chance of reaching help. His book was his lover and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span> -playmate and child. He put himself into motion -again and went on toward the Grange, beneath the -tempestuous sky, through the wind and the rain.... -When he came within Hawthorn Forest there -arrived a sudden lull. The oaks stood still around -him, the raindrops fringing branch and twig and -unfolding tufts of velvet leaves. Overhead the -clouds drove apart, there came a gleam of intensest -blue. As he moved through the forest it took on an -ineffable beauty. When he came to the edge and to -the stream murmuring over its pebbly strand there -was a great rainbow. He crossed the footbridge and -went on by the fairy oak.</p> - -<p>Within the still old house was none but himself. -Dorothy and the boy, her nephew, had been there -in Hawthorn Church. They would come on but -slowly; indeed, they might have stopped at a cousin’s -on the way; indeed, he knew not if, terrified -and at a loss, they would come back to the Grange -at all. They might, perhaps, have waited to beseech -the minister’s and the squire’s protection and advice. -There was a fire in the kitchen. Aderhold, -spreading his cloak to dry, knelt upon the hearth, -crouched together, bathed by the good warmth. -But even while the light and comfort played about -him there came into his mind, suddenly, with sickening -strength, a thing that he had witnessed in his -childhood, here in England. Again he saw a woman -burning at a stake.... He shuddered violently, rose -and left the room.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span></p> - -<p>Upstairs he unlocked the cupboard and took from -it a heap of closely covered manuscript. It rested -upon the table before him.... He stood for some -moments with a bowed head; presently his hand -stole to the leaves and caressed them. He knew what -he should do; he should take the whole down to the -kitchen and lay it in the fire. Since the warning of -the man with the hawk he had known that that -was what should be done. The knowledge had lain -upon his heart at night. “I will do it to-morrow,” -and again, “I will do it to-morrow.” The only other -thing was to hide it in some deep and careful place, -whence, if ever there came escape and security, he -might recover it, or where, long years after he was -dead, men might find it and read it. He had thought -of digging beneath the fairy oak—but the fire, he -knew, was the safest.... He gathered all together -and with it in his hands went downstairs. He -thought that he had decided upon the fire, but -going, he had a vision of a mattock and spade -resting behind an outhouse door. Now would be -the time to dig, now at once! As his foot touched -the oak flooring of the hall there sounded a heavy -knock upon the door. It was not locked or barred; -even as he stood the one uncertain instant, it swung -inward to admit the men who had followed him -from Hawthorn.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER XIV</h2> - -<p class="pch">NIGHT</p> - -<p class="pn1"><span class="smcap">The</span> storm that had broken in the early afternoon -regathered. The clouds hung low and black, the -wind whistled, the rain came in gusts, now and again -there was lightning and thunder. It was so dark in -Heron’s cottage, behind the deep, dripping eaves, -that Joan moving to and fro seemed a shadow -among shadows. The hearth glowed, but she held -her hand from making a bright light with fresh faggots. -Her mood was not for the dancing flame.</p> - -<p>What it was for she knew not. She only knew -that she was suited by the rain that dashed, by the -bending fruit trees, striking the thatch with mossed -boughs, the solemn roll of the thunder, the darkness -and solitude. She paced the room, her arms lifted -and crossed behind her head. At last a bit of unburned -wood caught and sent up forked flames. -Light and shadow danced about the walls. The -grey and white cat came and walked with Joan, -rubbing against her skirt.</p> - -<p>The thunder rolled. Outside, the murk of the day -thickened toward evening. A hand fell across the -door, then pressed the latch. The door swung inward; -there was a vision of a muffled figure, behind it wind-tossed -trees and up-towering clouds lit by lightning.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Who is it?” Joan cried sharply; then, as the -man let drop the cloak he had been holding across -his face, “Master Carthew!...”</p> - -<p>The firelight, sinking, left only the smouldering -coals and the room almost dark. Joan, moving -swiftly across the room, seized fresh brands and -threw them upon the old. A flame leaped up; the -place was fairly light again. She turned upon him. -“To come here—to come here—”</p> - -<p>“Aye,” he answered, “to come here.” He unclasped -his great cloak and let it drop on the settle, -took off his steeple-crowned hat and set it on -the cloak. He stood out, dark-clothed, plain as Master -Clement himself in what he wore, with short-cut -hair, with handsome features, haggard, flushed, -and working. “Do you know whence I have come? -I have come from leading men to the Oak Grange -where they took and bound that atheist there and -carried him away to gaol. You’ll walk no more -with him in Hawthorn Forest.”</p> - -<p>Joan drew a heavy, painful breath. “I walked -little with him in Hawthorn Forest. But when my -father took the plague he came to him. He is a good -man! Aye, I was in church and heard Master -Clement—”</p> - -<p>“Nay, I think that you walked much. But now -you will walk no more.” He came nearer to her. -“Joan, put that Satan’s servant from out your -mind! Turn instead to one who sinneth truly and -puts oftentimes in peril his immortal soul, but is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span> -at least no misbeliever and denier of God’s Word. -Joan—Joan!”</p> - -<p>He tried to take her in his arms. She was strong -and broke from him. Behind her was a shelf with -some pewter jugs and dishes and small articles of -use. She put up her arm and snatched from it a -good and keen hunting-knife; then stood, breathing -quickly, the firelight reddening the blade in her -hand.</p> - -<p>He gave a harsh and forced laugh. “Put it down, -Joan! I did not mean to fright thee. I came to -persuade—”</p> - -<p>“Nay, I’ll keep it by me,” said Joan. “Persuade -me to what? To feel love for you? That, Master -Carthew, you cannot do! But you could make me -feel gratitude—”</p> - -<p>“If I took hat and cloak and went from out your -door?”</p> - -<p>“Aye, just.”</p> - -<p>“I cannot.... No man ever loved as I love you.... -Here, this dusk, this Sabbath.—Think if I -am in earnest.... Joan, Joan! If I lose for thee -my immortal soul—”</p> - -<p>She made a sound of anger and contempt. “Oh, -thy little immortal soul! Be but mortal—and -just!” The tears rose in her grey eyes. “See what -you will do to me! Say that you were seen coming -here—say that any of the times you have waited for -me, waylaid me, met me against my will, you were -watched—we were seen together.... You are a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span> -man and a gentleman and a great man in this -country. It will not harm you. But Joan Heron—but -Joan Heron—it will harm her! It will provide -her misery for all her days!”</p> - -<p>Carthew struck his hand against the settle. “Is -not all my name and future risked? I am not of the -old England, nor of to-day’s careless and idolatrous -England. My world is the world of the new England, -of the forces of the Lord mustering upon the -straight and narrow path where there is no room for -Satan’s toys! And if I turn aside to Babylon and the -flesh and its madness, and if my turning becomes -known—Joan, Joan, you know not how great is my -risk—even my worldly risk! As for the other—as -for my risk of God’s hatred and damnation—but I -will not speak of that.... Enough that I am here, -and that to hold you consenting in my arms would -even all out and make my lead gold and my torment -bliss! Joan—if you would but love me and feel how -the risk is outweighed! As for security, we can manage -that. Many another pair has managed that. -To-day—here—with the wind and rain keeping -all within doors.... I rode with the men some way -toward the town, and then I left them, saying there -were matters at home that needed. When they were -out of sight, I turned through the fields and went up -the stream that was all solitary, until I was over -against the Oak Grange and the forest all around -me. Then I turned and rode here through the forest, -and fastened my horse in a hollow out there where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span> -none may see him.... Joan, it is like a desert all -about us—or like Paradise garden. Joan, Joan, I -love you! Joan, have pity!”</p> - -<p>There came an access of lightning with thunder -and a prolonged whistling of the wind. In the warring -light and darkness of the room, Carthew, as -though the final spring of restraint had snapped, -came close to her, put his arms about her. The -lightning blazed again, and by it both saw with distinctness -a man and woman standing without, their -faces close to the window. In the darkness after the -flash, they left it and came on to the cottage door, -but as yet did not knock. Within the room, Carthew, -sobered, the colour ebbing from his face, only -one consideration pouring in upon his mind, released -Joan and caught from the settle hat and -cloak. There was a second outward-opening door, -giving upon the bit of garden behind the cottage, -leading in its turn to the forest. He looked toward -it. She nodded, “Yes, yes, go!” He came close to -her, moving noiselessly and speaking low, “Do you -think they saw—saw at all?”</p> - -<p>She shook her head. “I do not know.”</p> - -<p>“It was too dusk within. I do not think they -saw. Keep counsel, Joan, for thy own sake if not -for mine.”</p> - -<p>The two without knocked. Carthew crossed the -floor without sound, opened the forest-facing door, -and with a gesture of farewell vanished. There was -a continuous noise of wind and rain; what daylight<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span> -was left and the lightning were all without; it might -truly be doubted if one glancing through the window -could either see or hear, the interior was so -dusky, the voice of wind and wet so continuing. -Joan, with a long, shuddering sigh, put down the -hunting-knife, and going to the door opened it. -The two who stood there were Will the smith’s son -and his mother. They had, it seemed, the weather -clearing, walked to see the forester’s people; then, -the clouds returning, they had taken their leave to -hurry home. But the storm had overtaken them—and -they had thought to take refuge until the rain -lessened in Heron’s cottage. But they did not -know—they thought they had better go on.</p> - -<p>“Come in and warm and dry yourselves,” said -Joan.</p> - -<p>They came in hesitatingly. They looked around -them, confused and doubtful. They sat on the settle -by the fire and stared at the grey and white cat. -Will was trembling, and it could not be from the wet -and chill, for he was used to that.</p> - -<p>His mother was of stouter mental make. “Were -you alone, Joan? It seemed to us there was somebody -else—”</p> - -<p>“Why, who else,” asked Joan, “could there have -been?” She looked around her. “The shadows -moving along the walls do look like people.”</p> - -<p>“It looked,” said Will, in a strange voice, “as -though you and a shadow were locked and moving -together. It looked like a tall black man.” He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span> -stared at the fire and at the grey and white cat. A -fine, bead-like moisture that was not rain clung to -his brow, beneath his yellow elf locks.</p> - -<p>“No, no black man,” said Joan. “I myself fancy -all kinds of things in a storm.”</p> - -<p>Her woman guest was silent. She sat with bead-like -blue eyes now on Joan, now upon the kitchen -from wall to wall. But Will’s perturbation remained. -The events of the day, North-End Farm -talk and the tinker’s talk, the atmosphere of heat -and storm, church and the denunciation of his old -master’s kinsman, the physician with whom at the -Oak Grange he had himself been in daily contact, -the talk at the forester’s which had been of the marvellous, -indeed, and the evident power of Satan; -afterwards the dark wood, the lightning, rain, and -thunder, and then the momentary spectral vision -through the window, which now, it seemed, was -naught—all wrought powerfully upon his unstable -imagination. There flowed into his mind his long-ago -adventure with the wolf that ran across the -snow-field, and was trapped that night but never -found ... but old Marget Primrose was found with -her ankle cut. The remembrance dragged with it -another—he was again with that same physician -sitting his horse before the portal of the great church -in the town—the carvings in the stone struck with -almost material force back into his mind that was -edged already with panic. <i>Witches and devils....</i> -And the tinker’s talk of how Scotland was beset,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span> -and Satan buying women, old and young.... He -had always thought of witches being old like Marget -Primrose or like Mother Spuraway—but, of course, -they could be young.... The forester’s wife, that -afternoon, had said something—it hummed back -through his head. Her beehives were bewitched by -Joan Heron’s beehives....</p> - -<p>His mind was tinder to every superstitious spark. -With a whistling breath and a shuffling of the feet, -he rose from the settle. “We’re dry and warm now, -mother.—Let’s be getting home.”</p> - -<p>His mother, it seemed, was ready. Her parting -with Joan was somewhat tight-lipped and stony. -“Seeing that you are alone now in the world ’tis a -pity you ever had to leave living by the town and -the castle! There were fine strange doings there that -you miss, no doubt—”</p> - -<p>The two went out into the declining day. The -rain had ceased, but the wind blew hard, driving -vast iron-grey clouds across the sky. However, -since the thunder had rolled away, one could talk. -As soon as the two were out of the cottage gate and -upon the serpentine green path, wet beneath the wet -trees, they began to talk.</p> - -<p>“It was something,” said Will; “and then when -we got within, it was nothing.... Mother!”</p> - -<p>“Aye, aye,” said his mother. “It wasn’t to be -seen plain. But she was not by herself.”</p> - -<p>“Mother ... the tinker saith that the Scotch -witches all have familiars. A man or a woman or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span> -sometimes children see such and such an one walking -or talking with a tall black man, but when they get -close there is only, maybe, a dog, or a cat, or sometimes -a frog or a mouse.... But the witch-prickers -always find the witch’s mark where the Devil that is -her familiar sucks.... And then the witch confesses -and tells how the Devil is now tall and black -like himself and now shrinks into the small beast, -and how by his power she can herself change her -shape.”—Will shivered and his eyes glanced fearfully -about. “Mother, do you think that there was -something evil there?”</p> - -<p>His mother looked steadily before her with beady -blue eyes. “I don’t know what I think. I think -there was somebody or something there that she -didn’t want seen or known about—but where it -went, or he went.... Don’t you think any more -that you might marry her.”</p> - -<p>Back in Heron’s cottage Joan sat crouched before -the fire. She fed it now constantly with wood so as -to make the whole room light. A determination was -taking form in her mind. To-morrow she would -walk to the town, and climb the castle hill, and ask -for Mistress Borrow at the castle. The old housekeeper -had called her a pagan, but natheless she had -been fond of Joan and Joan of her.... Now to go to -the castle, and find her in the cheerful housekeeper’s -room and to sit on the floor beside her with head, -maybe, in her lap, and free a burdened heart and -mind and ask counsel.... She would do it. She<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span> -would start early—at sunrise. The vigour of her -purpose lightened her heart; she rose to her feet, and -going to the window, looked out. It was quite dark. -The storm had died away, but the sky was filled -with torn and hurrying clouds. Now hidden, now -silvering cloud and earth, a half-moon hurried too. -Joan stood gazing, her face lifted. She thought of -her father. At last she raised her arm, closed the -casement, and drew across it its linen curtain. From -the cupboard she took a candlestick and candle and -lighted the latter with a splinter from the hearth. -She set it upon the table, and going to the main door -turned the large key in the lock. This done, she -moved across the kitchen floor to the small door -giving upon the back. The key was lost of this, but -there was a heavy bar. She had lifted this to slip it -into place when the door, pushing against her, -opened from without. Carthew reëntered the room.</p> - -<p>Joan uttered a cry less of fright than of sudden -and great anger. “Beware,” she cried, “that I do -not kill you yet! Begone from this place!”</p> - -<p>He shook his head. “No. I have watched all -away. Who comes, after curfew, of a wet and wild -night, to your cottage? No good folk of this region, -I am sure. So we’re alone now, Joan, at last!”</p> - -<p>He made a movement past her. She saw what he -was after, and, lithe and quick herself, she was there -first. She had the knife again.... They stood facing -each other in the lit room, and Joan spoke.</p> - -<p>“Thou hypocrite!” she said; “thou pillar of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span> -Hawthorn Church and dependence of God on high -and Master Clement! Thou hope of England! -Thou searcher-out of iniquity and punisher of -wrong-doing! Thou perceiver of high things and the -meaning of the world! Thou judge and master in -thy own conceit!—Thou plain and beast-like man, -who wantest but one thing and knows not love, but -lust—”</p> - -<p>He caught her in his arms. He was strong, but -so was she. They struggled, swaying, their shadows, -in firelight and candlelight, towering above -them. They breathed hard—they uttered broken -words, ejaculations. He was in the grasp of the -brute past; she struggled with the energy of despair -and hatred. She felt that he gained. Need taught -her cunning. She seemed to give in his clasp, then, -in the moment when he was deceived, she gathered -all her strength, tore her arm free, and struck with -the hunting-knife.</p> - -<p>The blade entered his side. She drew it out, encrimsoned. -They fell apart, Carthew reeling against -the wall. The colour ebbed from his face. He felt -the bleeding, and thrusting a scarf within his doublet, -strove to stanch it. As he leaned there, he kept -his eyes upon her. But with the suddenness of the -lightning their expression had changed. Wrath and -defeat and shame were written in them; desire still, -but mixed now with something baleful, with something -not unlike hate. The bleeding continued. He -felt a singing in his ears and a mist before his eyes.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span></p> - -<p>With the ice of the new mood came a sense of the -peril of his position. Did he swoon here from loss of -blood—grow so weak that he could not get away—be -found here when day came—. The scandal -flared out in letters of fire before him. He saw the -face of Master Clement, and the faces of other and -more powerful men of the faction, religious and political, -with which he was becoming strongly identified.... -He must get away—get home—framing -some story as he went. His horse was near—the -streaming blood seemed less.</p> - -<p>Joan stood like a dart, in her face blended relief -and horror. They stared each at the other.</p> - -<p>“Do you remember,” said Carthew in a hollow -voice, “in the forest there, I said that love might -turn to hate? Beware lest it has turned!”</p> - -<p>“You may hate me,” said Joan. “You never -loved me.”</p> - -<p>He took his eyes from her and moving haltingly to -the door opened it. His horse was close outside, -fastened within the small enclosure. Through the -dark oblong, by the light of the half-moon, she saw -him mount. He gathered up the reins, he held also -by the horse’s mane. His face looked back at her for -a moment, a ghastly, an enemy’s face. Then there -was only the mournful night and Heron’s cottage, -thatch-roofed, sunk among blossoming fruit trees -from which the raindrops dripped, dripped.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER XV</h2> - -<p class="pch">NEXT DAY</p> - -<p class="pn1"><span class="smcap">At</span> sunrise she shut the cottage door behind her, -locked it, and put the key in a hiding-place under -the eaves, then went down the path between the -daffodils and out of the little gate. She had a basket -upon her arm and within it in a blue jar a honeycomb -for a gift to Mistress Borrow. It was a morning -fresh and fragrant, the grass diamonded with -last night’s rain, the tree-tops veiled with mist, -distant cocks crowing. When she came upon the -road the sun was drinking up the mist; it was going -to be a beautiful day.</p> - -<p>She walked for some distance toward the village, -but at a point where she saw Carthew House among -the trees and the church yews were growing large -before her, she turned into a path that would take -her through the fields and bring her out upon the -highway with the village left behind. She did not -wish to go through the village, she did not wish to -pass Alison Inch’s door, she did not wish to come -near to Carthew House.</p> - -<p>She walked between the springing grain, and -through a copse where a thrush was singing, and by -a stream that was the same that murmured past the -Oak Grange, and so at last came back to the highway.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span> -She looked back. The village roofs, the church -tower, rested dark against the blue sky; light curls -of smoke were rising and a great bird sailed overhead.</p> - -<p>Before her, over hill and dale, ran the road to the -town. She shifted her basket to the other arm and -walked on in the golden morning. Now she was by -nature courageous, and by nature also a lover of -light and air, of form and colour, of diverse motion -and the throb of life. In her soul the whole round -earth mirrored itself as alive, and, despite black -moods and fits of madness, as dominantly good and -fair. What of sorrow, gloom, and care had of late -clung about her, what of terror and horror the happening -of the evening before had left with her, -slowly lessened, grew diaphanous in the sunlight -and open country. The road began to entertain -her, and there came sweet wafted memories of the -castle wood, of how fondly she and her father and -uncle had lived together and understood one another -and liked life, and of all the pleasant doings -when the great family were at the castle. Music -hummed in her ears again, the figures of the masque -filed across the green sward.</p> - -<p>In the fresh morning there was more or less meeting -and passing on the road. A shepherd with a -flock of sheep overtook her, and she stood under an -elm to let them by. The shepherd whistled clearly, -the sheep kept up their plaintive crying, pushing -and jostling with their woolly bodies, their feet making<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span> -a small pattering sound. “To market! To market!” -said the shepherd. “Are you for the market, -too, pretty maid?” Farther on she overtook in her -turn two or three children going on some errand and -walked with them awhile. They wanted to know -what was in her basket and she opened the jar and -showed them the bright honeycomb, then, breaking -clean skewers from a wayside hazel, dipped them in -the liquid gold and gave each child a taste. They -left her at a lane mouth, and she walked for a little -way with two women who were carrying between -them an old tavern sign painted with a sheaf of -wheat and a giant bunch of grapes. When she had -left these two behind and had gone some distance -upon a bare, sunny road, she saw before her like a -picture the river and the bridge, the climbing town -and the castle. She could make out the Black Tower -among the trees.</p> - -<p>The town was quit of the plague. To the knowing -there would be still visible a gloom about the place, -a trailing shadow of remembered fear and loss. -People would be missed from the streets, vacant -houses and shops remarked. Street cries and -sounds would come more sombrely and the sunshine -fall less warmly. But to the stranger it would seem -a town as usual. For Joan, it was not so gay and -rich as once it had been, because she that looked on -it was not so care-free as once she had been. But -still it was to her the great town, so different from -Hawthorn, so jewelled with pleasant memories....<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span> -She passed the vintner’s house and was glad to see -that it was open and cheerful, and that therefore he -had not died of the plague. At length she came to -climb the castle hill, and with her heart beating -fast to cross the pleasaunce and go around to a -certain small door of the offices through which she -would soonest gain admittance to Mistress Borrow. -The sky was so blue, the grass, the flowers, the budding -trees were so fair, mavis and lark and robin -sang so shrill and sweet, that earth and heaven -once more assumed for Joan a mother aspect. -Warm, not unhappy, tears came to her eyes. She -shook them back and went on over daisies and violets. -She had not slept last night and the miles -were long between her and Heron’s cottage. She -felt light-headed with the assurance of comfort and -counsel, the sense that the black cloud that had -gathered about her so strangely, so almost she knew -not how, would now begin to melt away.</p> - -<p>Mistress Borrow was not at the castle. Her sister, -thirty miles away, was dying of a dropsy, and the -housekeeper had been given leave to go to her. She -had gone last week—she might be away a month.... -The family were not there—they had gone at -the first alarm of the plague. Sir Richard had -stayed through it and my lord the countess’s father, -had stopped for a week, but they, too, were now -away.... It was a civil-spoken girl who told her all -this, a new maidservant who had no knowledge of -Joan. There were men and women servitors whom<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span> -she remembered and who would remember her, but -when the girl asked if, Mistress Borrow being away, -she could do her errand to any one else, she shook -her head. “You look dazed,” said the maid. -“Better come in and sit awhile.” But no, said Joan, -she must be getting home. So she thanked the girl, -and they said good-morning to each other, and she -left the little door and the flagged courtyard, and -coming out under an archway found herself again -upon the flower-starred grass, with the shadows of -the trees showing two hours from noon. To the -right stretched the castle wood, and she would go -through it and see again the huntsman’s house.</p> - -<p>It rose among the trees before her, a comfortable, -friendly, low, deep-windowed place. She would not -go very near; she did not know the people who had -it now, and truly she felt dazed and beaten and did -not wish questioning or talk. She found an old, -familiar oak with huge and knotted roots rising -amid bracken, and here she sank down and lay with -her head upon her arm and her eyes upon the place -where in all her life she had been happiest. An old -hound came and snuffed about her, a redbreast -watched her from a bough. She lay for some time, -resting, not thinking but dreaming back. At last she -rose, settled the basket upon her arm, looked long -at the huntsman’s house, then turned away, and -leaving the wood began to descend the castle hill.</p> - -<p>When she passed through the high street of the -town the church bells were ringing. She turned out<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span> -of the brighter street into one that sloped to the -river, and here she came upon an open place and the -prison tall and dark. She stopped short, standing in -the shadow of a bit of wall. It was easy for one’s -own cares to make one forget, and she had forgotten -Aderhold. But he would be here—there was no real -gaol in Hawthorn itself, though offenders might be -locked for a time in a dungeon-like room beneath the -sexton’s house. But a learned man and a property-owner -and a man accused of the greatest crime of -all, which was to deny the real existence and power -of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,—such -an one would be brought here. They would have -haled Master Aderhold here last night.... She -stood and gazed at the frowning mass. The windows -were few and far apart and small and closely -barred. To-day that was so sunshiny bright would -be stifling and black enough in there. She wished -that she could send in the light and air.</p> - -<p>A man, coming, too, from the high street with his -course shaped for Hawthorn Village, joined her -where she stood. He was a wiry, crooked-shouldered, -grizzle-headed, poorly clad person with a face -of some knavery, cunning, and wildness. Over his -shoulder, strung together with leather thongs, hung -some small pots and pans, and in a leather pouch he -seemed to carry tools and bits of metal. Joan recognized -him for the tinker, who, after wandering far -and wide, came back, at long intervals, to a hut just -this side of Hawthorn. It appeared that on his part<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span> -he remembered her face. “From Heron’s cottage, -mistress?—near the Oak Grange.” He seemed to -cast a glance upon the prison, but then he looked at -her grey eyes and her face, paler to-day than was its -wont, and asked if she had walked from home. She -said yes, she had been to see the housekeeper at the -castle—but she was not there. “Was she walking -back to Hawthorn?” Yes, she said, and began to -move across the prison square. He moved with her. -“I walked from Hawthorn myself this morning. -Matters to buy for my trade! Shall stop here at the -Boar’s Head before I take the road back.” To her -content he left her, and she went on by the great -church and down the hill to the arched bridge. But -when she had crossed it, and when the river behind -her lay thin like a silver crescent, she found him -again at her side.</p> - -<p>It was hot midday and the road bare of folk. She -did not wish a travelling companion and would have -liked to tell him so, but she was somehow cowed this -noon, weary and listless where on the sunrise road -she had been hopeful. She let him walk beside her, -a freakish figure, vowed to mischief. Immediately -he began to talk about the plague. Her father had -died?—“Yes.”—He had been told so. Many -people had died—many people in the town, and -not so many, but enough in Hawthorn and roundabout. -Once he saw the plague. He was lying in -the heather on a hillside near a town that had it. -Dark was coming. Then a great figure of a woman,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span> -black and purple, with a veil all over, rose straight -up above the roofs and chimneys. She lifted her -arms and took the veil from her head, and it was -crowned with shiny gold and she was the Plague—and -she floated in the sky and took her veil and drew -it behind her, and every roof it touched they were -going to die in that house.—Yes, tinkers saw -strange things, wandering over the country. There -were a many strange things, weren’t there? The -plague left the country very fearful—and there -was another strange thing, Fear! It took a man and -knocked the heart out of him—but then to make -up, it gave him more eyes and ears than he’d ever -had before!</p> - -<p>He looked at her aslant. “Did you ever see the -Devil?”</p> - -<p>“No.”</p> - -<p>“Then you aren’t fearful,” said the tinker. -“Fearful folk can see him plain.”</p> - -<p>He kept silence for a little, his eyes upon a cloud -of butterflies fluttering before them over a muddy -place in the road, then again turned upon Joan his -curious, half-squinting look. “Of course there’ve -been men who weren’t afraid and yet have seen -him. Men who were great enemies to him, and pushing -him hard, and he so angry and despairing that he -shows himself, tail, claws, and all! Tall Bible men -and great men like Doctor Martin Luther who -threw his ink-well at him. And a lot of other men—mass-priests, -and bishops, and marprelates, all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span> -the same. It’s to their honour to have seen him, for -so the people see how the Devil must hate them to -come himself to beard them, and what a strong -enemy they are to him, which means, of course, that -the King of Heaven must hold them in high regard.—Even -poor wights may sometimes give a -good blow—just as a camp-follower might save an -army or a scullion a palace! I’m not saying that -I didn’t get a glint of his horns myself once on -Little Heath, between two furze bushes!”</p> - -<p>Joan was not talkative. She walked steadily on, but -she was tired, and her mind now seemed to drowse, -and now, rousing itself, strayed far from the other’s -talk.</p> - -<p>The tinker was piqued by her inattention. “And -then witches and warlocks see him.—<i>Women</i> see -him,” he said with spite. “And not because they’re -his enemies neither! Ten women know him, hair -and hoof, to one man.... For why? They knew -him first, as the good Book tells us, and became his -gossips in Eden Garden. So ’tis that still when -things go wrong ’tis woman that gives them the -shog. The Devil gives her the apple still, and she -takes it and shakes out harm on mankind—which -is why we’ve got a leave to keep her somewhat -down! That’s woman in ordinary—and then you -come to witches—”</p> - -<p>Joan’s eyelids twitched.</p> - -<p>He saw that she attended. “Witches! First they -begin by having commerce with elves and fays,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span> -green men, and such. They get into fairy hills and -eat and drink there, and they dance in the moonlight -around trees in the wood. But the elves are -the Devil’s cousins, and he’s always on hand, and -some night he comes smirking up, dressed now this -way and now that. So the woman drops a curtsy, -and he puts out his hand and gives her something, -just as he did in Eden Garden. She takes it, and -that seals her both sides of the Judgement Day! -Pay for pay! Blood gives him strength, and so he -sucks from a little place he makes upon her body—that’s -the witch mark that can’t be made to feel -pain, and that’s why we strip and prick witches to -find their mark, which is better proof even than -their confessing! Now she’s the Devil’s servant and -leman forever, and begins to work evil and practise -the Black Art. He shows her how to fly through the -air and change herself into all manner of shapes. -Then she goes to his Sabbat and learns to know other -witches and maybe a wizard or two, though there -aren’t so many wizards. They’re mostly witches -and demons. If you look overhead at night you can -sometimes see a scud of them flying between you and -the moon. Then begin the tempests of hail and -thunder and lightning, and the ships that are sunk -at sea, and the murrain in the cattle, and the corn -blighted and ricks burned and beasts lamed and -children possessed and gear taken and sickness -come—”</p> - -<p>He stopped to cough and also to observe if she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span> -were listening. She was listening. He was saying -nothing that she had not heard before. They were -commonplaces alike of pulpit and doorstep. But it -had all been like figures seen afar off and upon -another road. Now she had come to a place in life -where, bewildered, she found them about her. Joan -was conscious that life was becoming like an evil -dream. Just as in a dream a hundred inconsequences -might form the strongest net, entangling you, withholding -you from some longed-for escape, so now, -awake, a hundred things so little in themselves— She -never said to herself that there was a net -weaving about her; the mind, struck and bewildered, -could not yet give things a name, perhaps -would not if it could. She only saw the gold and -warmth going for her steadily out of the sunshine—and -knew not how it came that they were going -nor how to stop that departure. Now she said dully, -“I do not believe all that,” and then saw immediately -that it was a mistake for any one to say that.</p> - -<p>The tinker again looked aslant. “Most of your -witches are old women. At their Sabbats you’ll see -a hundred withered gammers, dancing and leaping -around a fire with the Devil sitting in the midst, and -all sing-songing a charm and brewing in a kettle -a drink with which to freeze men’s blood! But each -crew hath always one young witch that they call the -maiden. A young and well-looking wench with red lips -and she calls the dance. They were burning -such an one where I was a while ago in Scotland.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span> -She cried out, ‘I be no witch! I be no witch!’ to the -end. But they sang and prayed her down and she -burned on.”</p> - -<p>Joan moistened her lips. “Why did they think -she was—”</p> - -<p>“Ah,” said the tinker, “there was a young laird -she had bewitched! He peaked and pined and syne -he cried out that a dirk was always turning in his -side. So they found, beneath the hearth in her cot, -a figure of wax with a rusted nail set in its side, and -as the wax melted away, so was he to pine. And there -were other tokens and matters proved on her. Beside, -when they tried her in the loch she never sank -at all. <i>Convicta et combusta</i>—which is what they -write in witch cases upon the court book.”</p> - -<p>By now they were much advanced upon the Hawthorn -road. The day was warm, the air moist and -languid. Joan felt deadly tired. There swam in her -mind a desire to be away, away—to find a door -from this earth that was growing drear and ugly. -She moved in silence, her grey eyes wide and fixed. -The tinker, his throat dry with talking, drew in -front of him one of the pans which he carried and -in lieu of further speech drummed upon it as he -walked. Presently a cart came up behind them, -empty but for a few trusses of hay, and the carter -known to them both, being Cecily Lukin’s brother.</p> - -<p>“Hey!” said the tinker. “Give me a lift!”</p> - -<p>The cart stopped. “Get in!” said Lukin. He -stared at Joan.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span></p> - -<p>The tinker, swinging himself up, spoke with a -grin. “There’s room for you too—”</p> - -<p>Joan shook her head. She made no halting, but -went on by in her greyish gown and wide hat with -her basket on her arm.</p> - -<p>The carter flicked his horse, the cart passed her, -left her behind, in a few minutes disappeared around -a bend of the road. To the last the two men stared -back at her; she seemed to hear Lukin’s slow, -clownish voice repeating Cecily’s tattle—Cecily’s -and Alison’s.</p> - -<p>Hawthorn Village grew plain before her: thatched -cottages, the trees upon the green, the church yews -and the church tower—there flashed upon her -again yesterday at church, and Master Aderhold -in prison. He was a good man; despite what the -minister had said, she believed that with passion—he -was a good man. It had not kept them from -haling him to prison. What would they do to him, -what?... She came to the path that would spare -her going through the village and turned into it -from the highway. It led her by the stream and -through the fields and out upon Hawthorn Forest -road. Heron’s cottage was in sight when she met -Goodman Cole, walking to the village.</p> - -<p>He looked at her oddly. “Good-day, Joan.”</p> - -<p>“Good-day, Goodman.”</p> - -<p>“Where have you been?”</p> - -<p>“I walked to the castle to see Mistress Borrow. -But she was not there.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span></p> - -<p>Goodman Cole propped himself upon his stick, -full in her way in the sunny road. “We are seeing -strange doings in Hawthorn Parish! Aye, strange -doings we are seeing! Have you heard about Master -Harry Carthew?”</p> - -<p>“No.—Heard what?”</p> - -<p>“Then I’ll tell you,” said the old man. “Yesterday -afternoon Master Carthew rode a part of the -way with the men who were taking the leech to the -town.—And there,” said Goodman Cole, “is another -strange thing! That we could like an atheist -well enough, and think him skilled and kindly, and -all the time he was mankind’s deadliest foe! ’Twas -the Devil sure that blinded us!—Well, as I was -telling you, Master Carthew rode a part of the way. -Then, having seen them well started, he turns his -horse, meaning to go first to Master Clement’s to -consult about having a commission named, before -the next assize, to look into a many things that have -happened about Hawthorn, some in connection with -the leech and some by themselves—and then to -ride from the minister’s home to Carthew House. -It was stormy as we know, the kind of hot and dark -storm they say witches brew. He was riding, looking -straight before him, and thinking what a darkness -like the darkness of the sky was over England, when -what does his horse do but start aside and begin to -rear and plunge—and yet there was nothing there! -It lightened, and the road on all sides lay bare. And -yet, in an instant, just like that! Master Carthew<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span> -was struck in the side and wounded as by a sword -or dagger. It lightened again and he had time to see -a tall black man dressed, bit for bit, like the leech,—and -it lightened the third time and the road was -bare as a blade, only he saw on the top of a bank a -figure like a woman making signs to the sky. Then -it fell dark, and there burst a great roar of thunder -and wind and the horse began to run. He checked -it just outside Hawthorn and rode around by Old -Path and the fields, for he felt himself bleeding and -did not wish to frighten people. So, going slowly, -he got home at last, and they laid him in bed and -found a great wound in his side.... Joan!”</p> - -<p>“Will he die?” said Joan.</p> - -<p>“And will you be glad if he does?... Wench, -wench, why do you look like that?”</p> - -<p>The old man and she faced each other, between -them but a narrow space of the forest road. Her -face was mobile, transparent,—a clear window -through which much of her nature might be read. -She had never thought to try to veil it—never -until of late. It was, on the whole, a strong and -beautiful nature, and none had quarrelled with the -face that was its window. But of late there had -come into her life to work her injury something -bitter, poisonous, and dark. Fear and hatred had -come, and a burning wrath against the net that was -weaving, she knew not how—a wrath and helplessness -and a wrath against her helplessness. All her -nature flamed against a lie and an injustice. And<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span> -because she had known so little fear, and when it -came it found it hard to make an entry, so it worked -like poison when it was within the citadel. It was -the foe she liked least; all her being rose and wrought -to cast it out. But it was giving her a fight—it -was giving her a fight.... And nowadays she had -to try not to show what she thought or felt. Sometimes, -by force of wit and will, she succeeded, keeping -her soul back from the window of her face. She -was not succeeding now, she felt. She bit her lips, -she struggled, she turned her face from Goodman -Cole, and stood, her hands closing and unclosing, -then, the victory won, but too late to save her with -him, she turned upon him a quiet face.</p> - -<p>It was too late. A good old man, but simple and -superstitious, he was staring at her with a misliking -and terror of his own.</p> - -<p>“I’d heard tales, but I wouldn’t believe any real -harm of Heron’s daughter,—but God knows what -to think when a woman looks like that!” He edged -from her, his hand trembled upon his staff; he -would evidently put distance between them, be gone -on his way. “The minister saith that from the -Witch of Endor on they have baleful eyes—”</p> - -<p>He suddenly put himself in motion. “Good-day -to you!” he said in a quavering voice, and went on -down the road with a more rapid step than was his -wont.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER XVI</h2> - -<p class="pch">MASTER THOMAS CLEMENT</p> - -<p class="pn1"><span class="smcap">Two</span> magistrates and certain of the clergy of the -town, Justice Carthew and Master Thomas Clement -from Hawthorn, sat in consultation in a room opening -from the hall of assizes. Court was not sitting—it -lacked a month and more of the time when -judges on circuit would appear and make a gaol delivery. -In the mean time a precognition was to be -prepared. The case was diabolical and aggravated, -involving as it did apostasy, idolatry, blasphemy, -and sorcery of a dye most villanous. Evidence -should not lack, witnesses must abound. On the -main counts of apostasy and blasphemy the prisoner -was himself convict by himself. He had been -brought from the prison hard by to this room for -examination, and the clergy had questioned him. -But no pressure or cunning questions would make -him confess idolatry or sorcery or the procuring of -Master Harry Carthew’s wound.</p> - -<p>The clerk wrote down what they had—Master -Clement’s evidence and Squire Carthew’s, together -with the evidence they had gathered from others -at Hawthorn, the clergy’s questions and the prisoner’s -answers. He copied also Master Harry Carthew’s -written testimony, Master Carthew himself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span> -being still in bed, fevered of his wound. There was -enough and many times enough for the physician’s -commitment and most close confinement until -assize day—enough to warrant what Carthew and -the clergy urged, a petition to the Privy Council -that there be especially sent a certain judge known -and belauded for his strict handling of such offences, -and that, pending assizes, a commission be named to -take depositions and make sweeping examination -throughout the Hawthorn end of the county—seeing -that Satan had rarely just one in his court. -Indeed, there were signs in many directions of a -hellish activity, whether in pact with the leech or -independent of him remained to be discovered. -Hawthorn mentioned the afflicted child at North-End -Farm, the great number of lamed animals, a -barn consumed to ashes, and the hailstorm that had -cut the young wheat.</p> - -<p>“A woman was seen by Master Harry Carthew?”</p> - -<p>The squire nodded. “Aye. Moreover, this long -time Mother Spuraway has been suspect.”</p> - -<p>The minister of Hawthorn sat, a small, rigid, -black figure, his hands clasped upon the board before -him, his light-hued, intense eyes seeing always -one fixed vision. His voice was unexpectedly powerful, -though of a rigid quality and inclined to sing-song. -“My mind is not made up as to what brought -the plague to Hawthorn and the region north. But -I hold it full likely that Satan was concerned to -harass a godly and innocent people, godly beyond<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span> -many in England, if I say it that perhaps should -not! It is well known and abundantly proved that -his imps and ministers, his infidels, Sadducees, and -witches go about to construct a pestilence no less -readily than they do a hailstorm or a tempest that -miserably sinks a ship at sea. I would have the commission -take evidence upon that point also—”</p> - -<p>The clerk, a thin, stooping, humble man, slightly -coughed, then spoke deprecatingly. “If I may make -so bold, your worships—the prisoner hath a manner -of good reputation among some in this town. -He came during the plague and healed many.”</p> - -<p>“Aye, so?” answered Justice Carthew. “About -Hawthorn also may be found a few silly folk who -would praise him, though none I think will praise -him who were at church last Sunday! But this cargo -of damnable stuff we’ve found will beat down their -good opinion.”</p> - -<p>“The unsafest thing,” said a fellow justice, and -nodded portentously,—“the unsafest thing a plain -man can do is to think and speak well of a heretic.”</p> - -<p>And with that serving-men from the Boar’s Head -near by entered, bearing a collation for the magistrates -and clergy assembled....</p> - -<p>Late in the afternoon the men from Hawthorn -returned home. Squire Carthew rode with pursed -lips, ponderously on to Carthew House. But the -minister refused an invitation to accompany him. -He wished to consider these matters in his closet, -alone with the Scriptures and in prayer. He put up<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span> -his horse and went into his small, chill house. There -lived with him an aunt and one maidservant, and, -it being late, they had his supper spread and waiting. -But he would not touch the food; he had ordained -for himself a fast.</p> - -<p>With a candle in his hand he went into his small -bare room and closed the door. Cloak and hat laid -aside, he appeared slight and spare and sad-coloured, -a man as intensely in earnest as might well be; a -man, as far as his conscious knowledge of himself -could light the vaults and caverns, sincere and of an -undivided will to the service and glory of his God. -On the table lay his Bible, open; from wall to wall -stretched a space of bare floor good for slow-pacing -to and fro, good for kneeling, for wrestling in prayer. -The room was haunted to him; it had seen so many -of what he and all his day, and days before and days -after, called “spiritual struggles.” But there was -pleasure no less than gloom and exaltation in the -haunting; there were emanations from the walls of -triumph, for though his soul agonized he was bold -to believe that also it conquered. He believed that -he was foe of Satan and henchman of the Lord.</p> - -<p>Terror at times overwhelmed the henchman—panic -thoughts that Satan had him; cold and awful -doubts of his acceptability to his overlord. But -they were not lasting; they went away like the chill -mists from the face of the hills. It was incredible, it -was impossible that the Lord would not see his own -banner, would not recognize and succour his own<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span> -liegeman! The liegeman might err and come under -displeasure; good! the punishment came in agony -and remorse for lukewarm zeal, in a shown sight of -the evil lord to whose suzerainty he might be transferred -and of that lord’s dismal and horrible demesne! -Nay, more solemnly and threateningly, in -an allowed vision of what a disobedient liegeman -would forfeit—the heavens opening and showing -the rainbow-circled throne, the seven lamps, the sea -of glass, the winged beasts saying, “Holy, Holy, -Holy!” and giving glory and honour and thanks; -the four-and-twenty elders crowned with gold, falling -down and worshipping Him who sat on the -Throne; the streets of gold, and the twelve gates, -and the temple open in heaven, and in the temple -the ark of the testament. “O God,” prayed the -minister, “take not my name from the book of life! -Take not my name from the book of life, and I will -serve thee forever and ever!”</p> - -<p>Master Clement very truly worshipped the God -whom he had seated on the throne, and was jealous -for his honour and glory and solicitous for his praise -among men, and would give life itself to bring all -mankind under his Lord’s supremacy. As little as -any man-at-war of an earthly feudal suzerain would -he have hesitated to compel them to come in. Was -it not to their endless, boundless good, and without -was there any other thing than hell eternal and everlasting -and the evil lord? If, contumaciously, they -would not come in, or if being in they rebelled and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span> -broke from their allegiance, what else was to be -done but to carry fire and sword—that is, to put -into operation the laws of the land—against his -Lord’s enemies? Had any one called his attention -to the fact of how largely liegemen like himself had -brought these laws into being, he would have answered, -Yes; under the direction of their Suzerain’s -own Word, writ down for their perpetual guidance, -shortly after the making of the world!</p> - -<p>It was not alone eager jealousy for his Lord’s -glory and honour, nor anxious care that he himself -prove in no wise an idle and unprofitable servant, -that was felt by Master Clement. To his intense -zeal and his own cries for life eternal was added a -thwart love of mankind—that portion of it enclosed -in the great sheepfold, and that portion who, -wandering outside, lost upon the mountain-sides -in the cold and darkness, yet had in them no stubbornness, -but would hasten to the fold so soon as -they heard the shepherd’s voice through the mist. -He was eager for them, his brothers and children in -the fold; eager, too, for the poor lost souls upon the -mountains,—lost, yet not wilfully, stubbornly, and -abandonedly lost, but capable of being found and regained, -so many as were elected.</p> - -<p>But the others, ah, the others! they who set up -their own wills and professed other knowledge, or, -if not knowledge, then doubt and scepticism of the -liegeman’s knowledge, writing a question mark beside -that which was not to be questioned—they who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span> -moved away from the fold in its completeness! -Master Clement’s zeal flared downward no less than -upward, to the left no less than to the right. He -hated with intensity—with the greater intensity -that he was so sure his hatred was disinterested. -“Have I not hated <i>Thy</i> enemies?” But if those -without were manifestly rather than invisibly of the -Kingdom of Satan,—if their ill-doing was so great -that it became as it were <i>corporeal</i>,—if the people -saw them open atheists, wizards, and witches,—if -their foot had slipped or their master had been -negligent to cover them with his mantle of darkness,—the -soul of Master Clement experienced a grim -and deadly exaltation. He tightened his belt, he -saw that his axe was sharp, he went forth to hew -the dead and poisoned wood out of the forest of the -Lord.</p> - -<p>In his small room he sat and read by his one -candle—read those portions of the Old Testament -and the New which he wished to read. Had a spirit -queried his choice he would have answered, “Is it -not all his Word? And are not these the indicated -circumstances and this very passage the Answer -and Direction?” When he had finished reading he -knelt and prayed long and fervently. His prayer -told his God who He was, his attributes, and what -was his usual and expected conduct; it told Him -who were his enemies and rehearsed the nature -of the ill they would do Him; then changed to -a vehement petition that if it was his will He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span> -would discover his enemies and bring them to confusion—and -if by means of the worm Thomas -Clement—</p> - -<p>He prayed in terrible earnest, his hands locking and -unlocking, beads of sweat upon his brow, prayed -for the better part of an hour. Finally he rose from -his knees, and standing by the table read yet another -passage, then paced the floor, then sat down, and, -drawing forth the tablets upon which he had made -his own notes of the examination that day, fell to -studying them, the open book yet beside him.</p> - -<p>He read over a list of questions with the answers -Aderhold had given. He had not been quick to give -the answers—he had fenced—he had striven to shift -the ground—but at last, with a desperate quietness, -he had given them.</p> - -<p><i>Qu.</i> Do you believe in God?</p> - -<p><i>Ans.</i> In my sense, yes. In your sense, no.</p> - -<p><i>Qu.</i> In God as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?</p> - -<p><i>Ans.</i> No.</p> - -<p><i>Qu.</i> Then you do not believe in the Trinity?</p> - -<p><i>Ans.</i> No.</p> - -<p>There were other questions—a number of them—and -the answers. But the very beginning was -enough—enough. Master Clement, sitting rigidly, -stared at the opposite wall. A sentence formed itself -clearly before his eyes, the letters well made, of a -red colour. Only the last of the three words wavered -a little. CONVICTED AND HANGED. Or -it might be CONVICTED AND BURNED. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span> -first two words stood steady, and above them the -name, GILBERT ADERHOLD.</p> - -<p>The concern was now to prove the sorcery—and -to take all confederates in the net—to lop Satan -in all his members.</p> - -<p>The minister stared at the wall. Another name -formed itself as though it were stained there—MOTHER -SPURAWAY....</p> - -<p>Master Clement sat rigid, trying to place other -names beside this one. It was his sincere belief that -there were others. The probable diabolical activities -at the Oak Grange—the coming to Hawthorn, after -so long and godly an immunity, of the late sickness—the -varied and mysterious happenings, losses, and -attacks with which village and countryside were -beginning to buzz—this final heinous Satan-revenge -and attempt upon the godliest and most greatly -promising young man of whom he had any knowledge—back -again, and above all, to the blasphemer, -the atheist, the idolater, and denier now fast in -gaol!—Master Clement was firm in his belief that -so frightful and important a round of occurrences -pointed to many and prime agents of evil, though -always that unbeliever yonder would prove the ring-leader, -the very lieutenant of Satan himself! Hawthorn -made a narrow stage for such a determined -and concentrated presence and effort on the part of -the Prince of the Power of the Air. But Master -Clement’s was a narrow experience and a mind of -one province. To him, truly, the stage seemed of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span> -the widest, and the quarry worthy Apollyon’s presence -in person.</p> - -<p>The atheist and sorcerer himself—Mother Spuraway—who -else? The minister thought of old -Dorothy at the Grange. There existed a presupposition -of contamination. On the other hand, so -far as he knew, there had never gone out a word -against her; she had seemed a pious, harmless soul, -trudging to church in all weathers. That in itself, -though, the Devil was wont to use as a mask. -Witness the atheist and sorcerer at church! Nay, -was it not known that sometimes Satan came himself -to listen and to confound, if he might, the -preacher, making him tame and cold in his discourse; -or razing from his memory that which he -had carefully prepared; or putting into his mind, -even while he preached, worldly and wicked and -satiric thoughts; or during a sermon of so great -power that all who heard should be lifted to the -courts of heaven, stuffing the mind of the congregation -with a like gallimaufrey?</p> - -<p>The minister sat stiffly, staring at the wall. Dorothy’s -name did not form itself there before him, but -neither did he wholly dismiss it from mind. He put -it, as it were, on the wall at right angles, marked, -“To be further thought on.” Then what other name -or names for the main wall?... Old Marget Primrose -was dead. He thought of two or three old -and solitary women, and of the son of one of the -Grange tenants—a silent and company-shunning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span> -youth who had gotten his letters somehow, and went -dreaming through the woods with a book. Once -Master Clement, meeting him by the stream-side, -had taken his book from him and looking at it found -it naught but idle verse; moreover, it seemed that -it was Master Gilbert Aderhold’s book, and that -the youth went at times to the Grange for instruction.... -All these, the boy with the itch for learning, -and the two or three women he relegated to the -wall with old Dorothy.</p> - -<p>There was one other—there was Grace Maybank. -She was not old, but Satan, though for occult -reasons he oftenest signed them old, signed them -young as well, and though he gave preferment to -the ugly and the bent, would take good looks when -they were at hand. Satan had already signed Grace -in another department of the Kingdom of Evil-doing. -The minister rose, and going to a press that stood -in the room, took from it a book in which was entered, -among other things, cases of church discipline. -He found the page, the date several years back. -<i>Grace Maybank, Fornicatress. Stood before the congregation, -two Sundays in each month for three months -in succession. Texts preached from on these Sundays, -for the warning of sinners....</i> And again, <i>Grace -Maybank, her infant being born, stood with it in her -arms before the congregation, Sunday, June the ——</i>.</p> - -<p>Grace came into the probable class. Moreover—“Ha!” -said the minister, recollection rising to the -surface. He took from a second shelf a book of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span> -record, made not by himself, but by his predecessor, -the godly Master Thomson. It ran back twenty -years and more. He found near the beginning of -the book what he was looking for. <i>Ellice Maybank. -Suspect of being a witch, and dragged through Hawthorn -Pond. The said Ellice swam. Died of a fever -before she could be brought to trial.</i></p> - -<p>“Ha!” said Master Clement; “it descends! it descends!” -But he was a careful and scrupulous man, -and so he put Grace’s name only up on the probable -wall.</p> - -<p>It was growing late. A wind had arisen and -moaned around the house. He went to the window -and looked out at the church and the church yews. -A waning moon hung in the east. The yews were -black, the church was palely silvered; Master -Clement regarded the church with eyes that softened, -grew almost mild. The plain interior, the -plain exterior, the hard stones, the tower lifting -squarely and uncompromisingly toward the span -of sky that was called the zenith—whatever of -romance was in Master Clement’s nature clung and -centred itself here! Hawthorn Church was his beloved, -it was his bride.</p> - -<p>He stood by the window for some minutes, then -turning began again to pace the room, and then once -more to read in the Bible. It chanced now—his -main readings that night having been concluded—that -he had eyes for passages of a different timbre. -He read words of old, firm wisdom, Oriental tenderness,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span> -mystic rapture, strainings toward unity—golden -words that time would not willingly let slip. -Many a soul, many a tradition, many a mind had -left their mark in that book, and some were very -beautiful, and the voices of some were music and -long-lasting truth and carried like trumpets.</p> - -<p>Master Clement read, and his soul mounted: only -it mounted not to where it could overlook the earlier -reading in the same Bible. It never came to a point -where it could hold the two side by side and say, -“Judge you which concept and which mind you will -accept as brother to your own! For many minds -have made this book.” Master Clement read, and -his soul lightened and lifted, but not so far as to -change settled perspectives. Had he not read these -passages a thousand times before? The names remained -upon the wall, and when after a time he -undressed and laid himself in bed, they stayed before -him without a shadow of wavering until he -slept. Indeed, he drowsed away upon the word -CONVICTED—</p> - -<p>Morning came. He rose at an ascetic’s hour, -dressed in a half-light, and ate his frugal breakfast -while the day was yet at the dawn. The two women -waited upon him; breakfast over, he read the Scriptures -to them, and standing, prayed above their -bowed heads. Later he went out into the hedged -path between his house and the church and began -his customary slow walking to and fro for morning -exercise. The sun was coming up, a multitude of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span> -birds sang in the ancient trees. Master Clement -walked, small, arid, meagre, and upright, his hands -at his sides, and presently, in his walking, caught -sight of something white at the edge of the path. It -proved to be a hand’s-breadth of paper, kept in -place by a pebble. He stooped and picked it up. On -it was marked in rude letters, JOAN HERON. He -turned it over—nothing on the other side, blank -paper save for the name. He walked on with it in -his hand. Twenty paces farther there was another -piece of paper, held by another pebble, and a fair duplicate -of the first—JOAN HERON. Well within -the churchyard he found the third piece—JOAN -HERON. ASK JOAN HERON WHO GAVE -HER THE RUE THAT’S PLANTED IN HER -GARDEN.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER XVII</h2> - -<p class="pch">MOTHER SPURAWAY</p> - -<p class="pn1"><span class="smcap">Master Clement</span>, the papers in his hand, retraced -his steps until he came to a bench set in the shadow -of a yew that knotted the minister’s house and garden -to the churchyard. He sat down and spread the -three out upon the wood beside him. It was the last-found -scrap upon which, naturally, he concentrated -attention. ASK JOAN HERON WHO GAVE HER -THE RUE THAT’S PLANTED IN HER GARDEN. -He sat with knitted brow and pursed lips, -searching for a meaning. One was not there at first -sight. He weighed the words. JOAN HERON—The -daughter of old Heron that had died of the -plague. He brought her before his mind’s eye—a -tall, grey-eyed girl sitting quietly in church. Save -for that image she did not come into his mind with -any force; he had, after all, no great knowledge of -her. They were outlying people, the Herons, and -then they had been away from Hawthorn. He was a -man of the study and the pulpit and of crisises in -the parish, rather than of any minute, loving, daily -intercourse and knowledge; theologian rather than -pastor. JOAN HERON. He would, however, -presently think together any impressions or memories. -Now little occurred further than that she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span> -had been away with her father for years, living -under the walls of the castle that was prelatical. -In addition, he remembered that neither old Roger -Heron nor this girl had ever brought to him spiritual -problems to be solved. Many did bring them—cold, -creeping doubts as to whether God really meant to -save them or not. But the Herons had never done -so. The fact, called to mind, just faintly darkened -for him the name beneath his hand. He would -make enquiries.—WHO GAVE HER THE RUE -THAT’S PLANTED IN HER GARDEN.</p> - -<p>Master Clement frowned. He had little taste for -riddles and uncertainties and haunting suspensions -of thought. Make a line distinct; colour matters -plainly; if a thing were black, paint it in black! The -words on the paper carried no meaning, or a foolish -one. RUE.... Not long before he had been reading -an account, set forth in a book, of a number of -Satan’s machinations, and of the devices, likings, -and small personal habits of his sworn servants. A -bit of this text suddenly sprang out before him, sitting -there beneath the yew tree. “<i>For plants—hemlock, -poppy, and mandrake, and, especially, the -witches love, handle, and give to such as show inclination -to become of their company, rue</i>—”</p> - -<p>Master Clement slowly folded the three pieces of -paper together, took out his pocketbook, and laid -them in it. Grace Maybank was yet strongly in his -mind, but now on the wall beside her name he put -another name.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span></p> - -<p>A little later, hatted and cloaked, he stepped into -Hawthorn street. As he did so he looked northward -and, seeing Squire Carthew riding in from -Carthew House, stood and waited. The squire approached, -gave good-morning, and dismounted. He -nodded his head; ponderously energetic he had put -already his engines into motion. The constable with -helpers was gone at sunrise to take into custody -Mother Spuraway, have her into the village, and -thrust her into the room beneath the sexton’s house -that did for village gaol. To-morrow, after examination, -and if proof of her evil-doing were forthcoming, -she should be sent to town and quartered in the -prison with the leech. Orders likewise had been given -to the North-End Farm folk to bring into Hawthorn -the afflicted boy. To confront the injurer with the -injured, that was the best and approved way—</p> - -<p>“How is Harry Carthew this morning?”</p> - -<p>“Very fevered still. He talks strangely and paganly—about -gods and goddesses and Love and -the Furies and I know not what trash.”</p> - -<p>“Ah!” said Master Clement. “Were it devil or -Gilbert Aderhold who struck him that night, be sure -from the dagger would have run Satan’s own venom, -empoisoning the mind, bringing growth of nettles -and darnel into the soul! The godly young man! I -will pray—I will wrestle with God in prayer for -Harry Carthew—”</p> - -<p>From beyond the church there burst a small riot of -sound. “They’ve got Mother Spuraway—”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span></p> - -<p>The constable had his hand upon the old woman’s -arm and dragged her along, she being lame and -stumbling. Behind them marched the constable’s -helpers, a self-constituted posse. Here was the -father of the afflicted boy, and Lukin the carter, and -a ditcher whose arm was palsied, and one or two -others. A dozen boys brought up the rear. One had -run ahead to cry to the village what was happening. -Everybody was coming to door and window, out of -doors, into the street. Voices buzzed and clacked. -The witch fever was mounting, mounting, hardening -the heart, confusing the head!</p> - -<p>When Mother Spuraway saw the minister and the -squire, for all she was as old and spare and feeble as a -dried reed, she broke from the constable, and, running -to them, fell upon her knees and raising her -clasped hands began at once to protest her innocence -and to beg for mercy.</p> - -<p>The squire spoke to the North End farmer. -“They’re bringing your son in?”</p> - -<p>“Aye, sir. His mother and sister and my son -that’s married and his wife and my niece and Humphrey -Tanner. He’s twisting fearful, and he sees the -dog come day and come night!”</p> - -<p>“Your worship, your worship!” cried the old woman -on her knees. “I never could abide dogs—Is it -likely I’d trouble a child?—Oh, Master Clement—”</p> - -<p>The squire was speaking with the constable and -the farmer, the whole company of witch-takers -hearkening to him rather than to Mother Spuraway.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span> -Had she not kept up a like babble clean from her -own hut to Hawthorn? But the witch and straightening -out the two walls were Master Clement’s concern. -Not always subtle, he was subtle when it came -to playing the inquisitor. When the rôle fell to him, it -was as though he had suddenly endued himself with -a mantle that fitted. Had he lived in a Catholic -country, had he been born and baptized there into an -unquerying group, it is not unlikely that sooner or -later he would have found employment in the Holy -Office, unlikelier yet that he would not have served -with zeal and a consciousness of high devoir done -that King in heaven. In a vast range of relations -starkly literal, he was capable when it came to theological -detection, of keen and imaginative work. -The churchyard yews somewhat cut off the village -street; the small present crowd were attending to -the squire. Master Clement put some questions. -Mother Spuraway, who was now moaning and rocking -herself, roused as best she could to answer. -Associates? She had no associates. What, in God’s -name, should she have associates for? The leech? -Well, the leech had taken her trade, that was all the -association there—</p> - -<p>“Ha!” said Master Clement. “The same trade! -She hath said that far!”</p> - -<p>Mother Spuraway looked at him and shrank affrighted. -“My trade was to gather good herbs and -make sick folk well. I meant that I was a leech as -well as he.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Leechcraft is not for women,” answered Master -Clement. “But leechcraft was not his main trade. -His trade is in souls to Satan, his own soul and -others. I fear me that thou art indentured to that -same master and may well speak of this atheist and -sorcerer as thy fellow trafficker! Tell me what others -thou art concerned with—”</p> - -<p>Mother Spuraway had an inward sturdiness, -though age and weakness, fear and pain might yet -betray it. “Concerned neither with him nor with -others. Oh me! oh me! I’ve always stood on my -own feet and harmed no one—”</p> - -<p>“They that stand on their own feet and by their -own strength,” said the minister, “are naught. So -they lean not upon Scripture and know that they -are naught in themselves, but only by grace of another, -they are already lost and have reached their -hand to Satan.—Tell me if Grace Maybank be of -thy company?”</p> - -<p>“Grace Maybank!” Mother Spuraway’s voice -quavered and her frame seemed to shake. Perhaps -there rose a memory of a love philtre or charm, or of -Grace in trouble, coming secretly for counsel. But -Mother Spuraway never took life. The child was -born, was it not?—as merry and pretty a child as if -it were not set apart and branded for life. Grace? -It had been little that she had done for Grace! The -charm had not worked; the man would not offer -marriage, and so save Grace from what came upon -her. Grace herself had come to the hut and bitterly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span> -reviled her for a useless wise woman. Grace Maybank! -She began to stammer and protest that she -and Grace were strangers.—But Master Clement -thought the most and the worst and the impossible. -“Ha!” he said. “That window hath a light in it!” -In his mind Grace’s name left the one wall and came -over to the other.</p> - -<p>The squire made a movement from the constable, -the constable a movement toward his prisoner. -“Tell me,” said Master Clement in a tense and low -voice,—“tell me why you gave a bush of rue to -Joan Heron?”</p> - -<p>He had not known that she had done it. It had -flashed upon him to make that move. Made, he saw -that it was correct.</p> - -<p>Mother Spuraway, dazed and shaken, put up her -two hands as though to ward off blows that she -knew not why were coming. “What harm,” queried -her thin old frightened voice, “in giving a body a -sprig of rue? She had none in her garden.”</p> - -<p>“How did the rue come to you?”</p> - -<p>“It was growing about the burned cot.” For all -her terror and misery Mother Spuraway felt a gust -of anger. “O Jesus! What questions Master Clement -asks!”</p> - -<p>The constable came and took her by the arms. -“On with you! Don’t say that you can’t walk, when -we know that you can dance and fly!”</p> - -<p>She broke again into a pitiful clamour. “I am no -witch!—Satan’s no friend nor master nor king<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span> -of mine—I know naught of the leech—I’ve put -no spell on any one—Oh, gentlemen, gentlemen, -think on the mother that bore you—” The constable -and his helpers dragged her away. Her voice -came back—“Think—think! How could I—”</p> - -<p>In a little while the North-End Farm folk came -into Hawthorn—Hawthorn quivering now with excitement. -Every loss of a twelvemonth, every undeserved -grief, every untoward happening, every -petty mystery was awake and growing monstrous. -The air was changing, the yew trees, the look of the -houses, the loom to the west of Hawthorn Forest.... -To-day, to an observer, the church might look -not greatly different from a palm-thatched or cedar -roof over some sacred stone or carven god. Out of -the deep veins, out of the elder world, old and gross -superstition had been whistled up. It had not far -to come; the elder world was close of kin. On the -climbing road of the human mind the scenery of the -lower slopes began to glow.</p> - -<p>The sexton’s house giving upon the green, Hawthorn -could find pretext enough for gathering there -in humming clusters. The sexton had a clean, bare -room where at times charges were heard and prisoners -brought up for examination from a cellar-like -apartment below. On the whole, Justice Carthew -preferred it to having poachers and vagrants, quarrelers, -swearers and breakers of various commandments, -petty officers, complainants, and witnesses -trampling into Carthew House. Now as the warm<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span> -midday drew on, he entered, marshalled by the constable; -with him, besides a young man half his son’s -tutor, half his own clerk, Master Clement, and a -neighbour or two of fair consequence in the village -and in Hawthorn Church. In the room already -were the North-End Farm folk. The crowd pressed -in behind, or, when no more were admitted, stood -as close as might be without the door, left open for -the air. Outside the one crazy window boys stood -on heaped stones, their eyes a-row above the sill. -The air seemed to beat and sound and pulse. No -other kind of lawbreaking could so raise, so universalize, -emotion. Other kinds were particular, affecting -a few. But where sorcery and witchcraft, blasphemy -and heresy, were arraigned, even though it -were in a poor room and village like to this, there -the universal enemy, there the personal foe of God -Almighty, came into court! The personal foe of -God was naturally the would-be murderer of every -baptized soul alive—the unbaptized were his already. -Nor did he stop at attempts against their -souls; he did not hesitate to direct his engines -against their bodies and their goods, to burn their -ricks and barns, blast their fields, palsy their arms, -lame their beasts, make their children peak and -pine, wither the strength of men within them—If -he had not yet harmed them to-day, he but waited -for the chance to do so to-morrow! No man, woman, -or child was safe, and the thing to be done was to destroy -his instruments as fast as they were found.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span></p> - -<p>The North-End Farm boy—an observer from the -platform of a further age might have conjectured -that it was partly a nervous disorder marked by -hysteria, partly an impish satisfaction in the commotion -produced and the attention received, partly -an actual rejoicing in the workings of his own imagination -together with a far past, early-man unawareness -of any reason for forbearance—the North-End -Farm boy cried out and writhed tormentedly.</p> - -<p>They brought Mother Spuraway up the steep -stair from the cellar and into the room, and making -a clear space stood her before the boy for what -should be judgement and doom. “The dog! the -dog!” he cried, and writhed in the arms of the men -behind him—“The dog!”</p> - -<p>The room quivered and sucked in its breath. -Now the magistrate, and now, at the magistrate’s -nod, the minister, questioned him. “You see the -dog?—Where do you see it?—There? But something -else is standing there! A woman is standing -there.... Ha! Only the dog there, showing his -teeth at you? Do you see no woman?... He sees -no woman. He sees only the dog.”</p> - -<p>“The dog! the dog!” cried the boy. “The constable -brought the dog in with him.... Oh, it -wants to get at me! It’s trying to shake the constable -off! Oh, oh, don’t let it!” And he writhed -and twisted, half terrified and persuaded by the -vividness of his own creation, deep down enjoying -himself.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span></p> - -<p>Commotion and hard breathing held in the room -and outside about the door and window. “He sees -her as she is when she’s running with Satan!... -Witch!... Witch!...”</p> - -<p>Mother Spuraway fell again upon her knees, beat -her hands together with passion. “It’s not true—he’s -lying!—Oh, sirs, are you going to hang me -for what a sick child says?”</p> - -<p>North-End Farm raised an answering clamour. -“Thou witch! ’Tis thou that liest! Take thy spells -off him!” The greater part of the room became -vocal, “’Tis not only that boy!—A many and a -many things happening!—My arm, thou witch! I -dug all day, and passed thee in the twilight, and -next day ’twas like this!—The corn so thin and -burned!—The old witch! She made a sign above -my wife’s drink and she died and the babe died!—The -witch! the witch! But she’s not alone.... -She and the leech.... Yes, but others than the -leech.... There are folk here who can tell.... -The plague—she brought the plague—she and -the Devil and her fellows.... The pond!—Tie her -thumb and toe and try her in the water—”</p> - -<p>There came a surge forward. Mother Spuraway -cowered and screamed. The squire might not object -to the water trial in itself, but he objected and that -strongly to any unruliness before Justice Carthew. -The people were used to being cowed; his voice, -bursting out against them, drove them back to a -silence broken only by murmurs and intakes of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span> -breath. The North-End Farm boy continuing -noisy, and crying out, his father and mother had -leave to take him from the sexton’s room and across -to the ale-house. There was curiosity to see if the -dog that was visible to him alone could follow. But -no! At the door he cried out that it tried to spring -after him, but could not pass the minister’s chair. -From the ale-house itself presently came back word -that he was much comforted and quiet and said that -Master Clement was keeping the dog from him.</p> - -<p>Mother Spuraway sat on a bench, somewhat cut -off from the rest of the room by the heavy chairs of -the Law and the Church. She sat crouched together, -for the most part silent, her white hair straggling -from beneath her cap, her lip fallen, her meagre, -bloodless hands with high-raised veins plucking at -the stuff of her old worn kirtle. The day was warm. -The squire, heated and thirsty, sent across for a -tankard of ale. When it was brought, he drank, set -the vessel down, and wiped his mouth. “And now,” -he said, “‘tis to find if, in getting two, we get all the -vipers in the nest—”</p> - -<p>He did not think so himself; nor did Master -Clement, nor did the throng of Hawthorn in the -sexton’s room and without, pressing about door and -window. The whispers had been continuous. It was -much to have put an arresting hand upon one witch, -and beyond doubt she was a witch and a <i>vera causa</i>! -But for more years than a few Hawthorn had looked -somewhat askance at Mother Spuraway. She had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span> -been among them for a long time, and these blackest -happenings had not happened. Not in all these -years the plague—never before at Hawthorn such a -thing as the bold wounding of the squire’s brother—never -before so many accidents of one kind and another! -For new activities new beings.... The leech, -of course, proved beyond all seeming to be so fell -and wicked a man! But not the leech alone.... -The feeling, whatever it was, was increasing. There -seemed something pent and thunderous, lying in -wait for its chance.... There were those now in the -crowd who had not been here earlier, who, having -heard what was toward, had made their way in -after the first. Some came from without the village. -The tinker was plain to the front. Midway of the -room might be seen Will the smith’s son and his -mother, and beside them Katherine Scott, the forester’s -wife. At the back, in company with the -Lukins, stood Alison Inch.</p> - -<p>The squire looked down at a piece of paper which -he held in his hand. “Now what is this about a -grey and white cat, and the burned cot in Hawthorn -Wood?”</p> - -<p>There rose a murmur, like wind over sedge. It -grew in volume, and out of it came clear a woman’s -voice. “It’s her familiar. He gave it to her. The -boys saw him give it to her at the burned cot.”</p> - -<p>The squire lifted himself a little—looked over -the crowd. “Who spoke there? Come forward here, -you who spoke!”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span></p> - -<p>A confusion; then Cecily Lukin was pushed to the -front. She came protesting, her face flushed. “Oh, -Your Honour, I didn’t know I was speaking so -loud! I never meant to say anything—”</p> - -<p>“Nay, you <i>must</i> say,” answered the squire. “He -or she who keeps witness back will find trouble for -their own part!”</p> - -<p>“I said naught,” said Cecily, “but that she had -a grey and white cat which lay on the hearth or in -the sun, and that once I did see it anger itself and -grow larger than natural, and its eyes glowed like lanthorns -and it went backward, rubbing itself against -her skirt—”</p> - -<p>“Mother Spuraway’s skirt?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, no, sir!” said Cecily. “They say Mother -Spuraway’s imp is a green frog that lives in a stream -by her door—”</p> - -<p>A boy beside the tinker, nudged by the latter, -opened his mouth. “Tom and Dick and Jarvis and I -were playing in Hawthorn Forest by the burned cot. -And a grey and white cat came out of the stones and -climbed up in the plum tree and sat and looked at -us, and we tried to drive it away, but we couldn’t. -Then Master Aderhold came out of the woods and -grew as tall as the plum tree and put up his arm, and -the cat came and lay upon it. And there was Joan -Heron standing in her grey dress, and she was as tall -as he was, and he gave her the cat and she laid it -along her shoulder, and they went away through the -woods without their feet touching the ground—”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span></p> - -<p>The forester’s wife was an impatient dame. By -this she had worked her way into the row nearest the -justice and the minister, and now she raised her -voice. “Your Honour and Maister Clement, I keep -bees, and, Your Honour, they’ve not done well for -a lang, lang time! They’ve not done well since, out -of kindness, I took three hives frae folk that were -gaeing visiting and put them with my ain. Those -bees I took, I swear were not just bees! Times I -thought as much while they harboured with my -bees, and would do naught nor let my ain do aught—but -I kenned it well when they were gone back -to where they came frae! Your Honour and Maister -Clement, I ha’ gone by where those hives stand -now and seen those bees come flying in with wings a -span long and shining, and bodies daubed with gold -and making a humming sound like a fiddle-string! -And those visiting folk were not auld Mither Spuraway, -though I doubt not she be a witch, too!—Those -beehives are standing under the thatch of Heron’s -cottage!”</p> - -<p class="p2">At sunset that evening Joan sat on her doorstep, -her elbows upon her knees and her brow in her -hands. The apple trees were in bloom, the heartsease -was in bloom beside the well, red and gold cowslips -brushed her shoe. The day had been warm, but -the evening fell cool and rich. All day she had not -gone from the cottage. She had seen none pass -either; the road, the fields, the wood were as quiet<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span> -as though human life had fled from the earth. She -sat with a heart oppressed, the world grown vague -and monstrous.... The cottage, the garden, the -fruit trees were wrapped in the afterglow. The birds -were still; the last bee had come in from the flowers; -somewhere in a marshy meadow, the frogs were beginning.</p> - -<p>The grey and white cat came and rubbed itself -against her. She lifted her head, and saw three or -four men on the winding path between the forest -road and Heron’s cottage. As they came nearer she -recognized first the tinker, but in a moment saw -that the one at the head was the Hawthorn constable. -Her heart stopped, then began to beat very -heavily. As they came through the gate and up -the little path she rose from the doorstep.</p> - -<p>“Good-day,” said one of them.</p> - -<p>“Good-day, neighbours.”</p> - -<p>The constable cleared his throat. He was a stolid, -elderly man with many daughters and sons, and he -opposed to the world a wooden, depthless face. -“Probably you know,” he said, “what we’ve come -for?”</p> - -<p>“No,” said Joan: “what have you come for?”</p> - -<p>The constable put out the staff that he carried and -touched her on the shoulder. “In the King’s name! -You’re to come with me for being a witch and working -great harm to the King’s good subjects—for -laming and casting spells—for worshipping Satan -at his sabbats at the burned cot and the fairy oak—for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span> -plotting mischief with an infidel, blasphemer, and -sorcerer—”</p> - -<p>Joan stood motionless, her grey eyes clear, the -blood not driven from her heart. She had seen the -harm brewing, she had had her torture in watching -the deep storm gather; now that it was rolling over -her she grew suddenly steady. Though she knew it -not she had always had strength and courage, but -now she touched and drew from some great reservoir -indeed. A wholesome anger helped her to it, an inner -total rebellion and scorn, an amazed recognition of -universal, incredible mistake and folly! Truly if men -based life so crumblingly, on such a lie as this!... -Sabbats at the burned cot and the fairy oak.... -Plotting with— Something swept over her face, her -frame seemed to grow taller in the flower-starred -dusk by Heron’s cottage.</p> - -<p>The tinker was next to the constable. Now he -spoke with an elfish grin and his foot trampling -down the cowslip by the door. “Mistress Young -Witch never thought, did she, that when Tom Tinker -came up behind her, standing before the prison -yonder, he saw well enough that she was making -witch signs to one within?—Now the witch to the -warlock—lemans must lodge under the same roof!”</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER XVIII</h2> - -<p class="pch">THE GAOL</p> - -<p class="pn1"><span class="smcap">Aderhold</span> looked forth from a narrow grating, so -high-placed that he must stand a-tiptoe like a child -to see at all. Summer without,—summer, summer, -and the winds of heaven! Within the gaol was summer -close and stagnant. It was difficult for light and -air to make their way into the space where he was -kept. What could come came, but much was prevented -by the walls and the intention with which -they had been built. In that day, in a prison such as -this, a noisy medley of people without freedom -might be found in the dark and damp central passage -and larger rooms or in the high-walled and dismal -bit of court. All manner of crime and no-crime, -soil, mistake, and innocence huddled there together, -poisoning and being poisoned. Time and space -received of their poison, carried it without these -walls with at least as much ease as air and light came -in, and distributed it with a blind face and an impartial -hand.</p> - -<p>But certain prisoners, those that people without -the prison thought too poisonous or were willing -vengefully to make suffer, were not allowed the hallway -or the court or speech with fellow misery. These -were put into small, twilight chambers or dungeons.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span></p> - -<p>Aderhold paced twelve feet by six—twelve feet -by six. He was shackled, a chain from ankle to -ankle, another from wrist to wrist. But they were -not heavy, and there was slack enough, so that one -might walk and to some extent use the hands. -Twelve feet by six—twelve feet by six. What -light fell through the loophole window fell in one -thin shaft of gold-dust. The walls were damp to the -touch, and scratched over with names, ribaldry, and -prayers. He himself, with a bit of pointed stone -that he had found, was graving in Latin upon an -unmarked breadth. Twelve by six—twelve by six—where -the straw pallet was flung, not more than -three feet clear.</p> - -<p>He knew well how to avail himself of the escape -of the mind and thereby to defeat the hours. He -had no books, but memory and imagination were -to him landscape and library, while the searching -thought worked here as elsewhere. Memory and -imagination could become his foes; Aderhold had -known that from of old. Oftenest friends and great -genii, but sometimes foes with mowing faces and -stabbing, icy fingers. But strangely to him, in -these days, no hostile side appeared; or if it came, -it came in lessened strength; or if its strength was -the same, then the opposing forces within him had -themselves gathered power to overcome. It seemed -to him that of late he had come to a turning; fear, -shrinking, and dismay, that had often met him full -course in life, often lurked for him at corners he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span> -must pass, seemed now themselves somewhat -shrunken and sinewless. He had known that there -was further growth within him—oh, further, -further!—and that some day he would turn and -look them in the face and see them for the pygmies -that they were. It seemed that the dawn of that -day had been nearer than he knew.... Twelve -feet by six—twelve feet by six—with as even and -steady a pace as the irons would allow, and all the -time to fancy that he walked free in Hawthorn -Wood. Then, for a change, to draw himself up and -see what might be seen through the slit of window. -What might be seen was the topmost branch of a -tree and a gargoyled angle of the great church -tower, and above all a scimitar breadth of blue sky. -From that to turn and grave at a letter upon the -wall; then to walk again; then to rest upon the -straw while the subtile body went free, passed like -an emanation through the prison walls and wandered -in foreign lands, and where there was neither -land nor water underfoot. At times he took under -consideration his own present predicament and -earthly future. But the sting and terror were gone. -That they were so he thanked his higher self, his -widening, deepening, marching consciousness.</p> - -<p>His present case.... There had been the examination -immediately after his arrest and commitment -to this gaol, the examination when he had -admitted the apostasy and denied the sorcery. But -that had been weeks ago, and since then naught.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span> -Day after day in this dusk place, and only the -turnkey had entered.</p> - -<p>This gaoler was a battered, sometime soldier, red-faced -and wry-mouthed. What romance had been -in his life appeared to have come to him with the -dykes and green levels and waters of the Low Countries. -Chance leading him one day to the discovery -that his prisoner knew Zutphen, Utrecht, and Amsterdam, -he had henceforth, at each visit, plunged -back for one short moment into the good old wars -and renewed a lurid happiness. The reflex, striking -upon Aderhold, lightened his lot as prisoner. The -gaoler, after the first few days, exhibited toward him -no personal brutality. Once he made, unexpectedly, -the remark that he had seen good fighting done by -all manner of people, and that the Devil must have -some virtue in order to make so good a stand. But -the gaoler’s visits were of the briefest, and he was -close-mouthed as to all things save the wars. If he -knew when assizes would be, he chose not to impart -it. One day only he had been communicative enough -to speak of the commission named by the Privy -Council. Who were the commissioners? He named -the members from this side of the county—two or -three of the clergy, several considerable country -gentlemen. From the Hawthorn end Squire Carthew -and his brother and Master Clement the minister. -It had been at work, the commission, meeting -and meeting and taking people up. The matter was -become a big matter, making a noise through the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span> -country. They said the King himself was interested. -A bishop was coming—and the Witch Judge.</p> - -<p>“The Witch Judge?”</p> - -<p>“Aye, the Witch Judge.”</p> - -<p>But the gaoler would say no more—Aderhold -was not sure that he knew much more. He left the -cell, and at no other visit would he speak of anything -but the Dutch and the good wars.... What -he had said had left a sharp thorn of anxiety,—not -for the prisoner’s self. Aderhold knew perfectly -well how palely hope gleamed upon Gilbert Aderhold. -He would be done to death. But he knew also, -from much observation, how they dragged the net -so as to take in unallied forms. He tried to think of -any at Hawthorn or thereabouts who might be endangered. -He had been intimate with no one; none -there had been confidant or disciple. How many -that could save he had had occasion to note in -France and Italy. Speech with such an one, acts of -mere neighbourliness, the sheerest accidental crossing -of paths—anything served for prosecution -and ruin.... In the lack of all knowledge he was -chiefly anxious about old Dorothy and the boy her -nephew, and the youth to whom he had given -books. He never thought of Joan as being in peril.</p> - -<p>Counting the days, he gathered that assizes could -now be no great way off. Then would he hear and -know, be judged and suffer. After that—continuance, -persistence, being, yet and for ever, though he -knew not the mode nor the manner of experience....<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span> -The gold light lay across the cell like a fairy road. -He turned upon his side, eased wrist and ankle as -best he might, and with the chain across his breast -fell half asleep. Ocean waves seemed to bear him up, -a strong warm wind to blow upon him, birds to -be flying toward him from some beautiful, friendly -strand....</p> - -<p>The grating of the key roused him. It was not -the gaoler’s time of day, but he was here, red-faced -and wry-mouthed.</p> - -<p>Aderhold rose to his feet. “Are the Judges -come?”</p> - -<p>The gaoler shook his head. “No, no! They’re -trying highway thieves next county. You’re to be -lodged t’other side of gaol.”</p> - -<p>They went down a winding stair and through a -dark and foul passageway, then from one general -room to another. The place was here dusk and -gloom, here patched with sunny light. It was well -peopled with shapes despairing and complaining, -or still and listless, or careless and noisy. The -gaoler and Aderhold crossed a bit of court and came -by a small door into a long and narrow room where -again there were prisoners, men and women.</p> - -<p>“Stand here,” said the gaoler, “while I get an -order.” He moved away to a door in the wall.</p> - -<p>The place was warm and dusk, save where from -high windows there fell a broken and wavering light. -There was a dull murmur as of droning bees. Sound, -too, from the town square without floated in,—summer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span> -sounds. A fugitive memory came to Aderhold. -It was years ago, and a spring morning, and -he was riding across the square with Will the serving-man, -Master Hardwick behind in the litter, -ahead on his great roan Harry Carthew. Upon the -heels of that retracing came another. It was last -winter again, and he stood on a doorstep not far -from here, and ten feet away Sir Richard from the -castle sat his horse and smelled at his silver box of -spices.... He came back to the present hour. This -place was long, like a corridor; it was curiously gold-brown -and red-brown, like a rich painting for light -and shadow. He looked across and, standing alone -against the wall, he saw Joan Heron.... All noise -stilled itself, all other shapes passed. It was as -though there were spread around them the loneliest -desert or sea-strand in all the world.</p> - -<p>Joan stood straight against the wall. Her grey -dress was torn, her grey eyes had shadows beneath -them, she had no colour in cheek or lip, and she -stood indomitable.</p> - -<p>Aderhold put his hand before his eyes. “Mistress -Friendly Soul,” he said, “why are you here?”</p> - -<p>“For somewhat the same reason,” she answered, -“that you are here. Because it is a crazed world.”</p> - -<p>“How long—?”</p> - -<p>“A long time.... Nearly four weeks.”</p> - -<p>“Is it my misery to have brought you here?”</p> - -<p>“No,” said Joan, “cruelty and wrong brought me -here.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span></p> - -<p>“You are charged with—”</p> - -<p>“Yes. With witchcraft.”</p> - -<p>The gaoler, returning, began furiously to grumble -that he would have no speaking together, and urged -Aderhold away. There was naught to do but to -obey; he went, but at the door looked back. She -was standing with her grey eyes and her sorrowful -face set in scorn of this place and of the world. The -door closed between them.</p> - -<p>“No!” said the gaoler. “No questions, for I’ll -not answer them. Say naught and pay naught!—Down -this stair. You won’t be so well lodged.”</p> - -<p>It mattered not greatly to Gilbert Aderhold how -he was lodged. When the gaoler was gone and the -grating key removed, and solitude with him in this -dim place, he lay down upon the stone that made its -flooring and hid his face. After a time, rising, he -walked the dungeon where he was immured. He -struck his shackled hands against the wall, pressed -his forehead against the stone....</p> - -<p>The hours passed, the day passed, another night -passed; another dawn came, strengthening outside -into burning day. The gaoler appeared for a moment -morning and evening, then darkness and silence.... -He thought that he must be yet nearer the great -church than he had been in his first cell. He could -hear the bells, and they clanged more loudly here.</p> - -<p>Aderhold, pacing the space not much longer or -wider than a grave, heard in their ringing church -bells far and near and deep in time. He heard them<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span> -ringing over Europe and from century to century. -He heard the bells of a countryside that had rung -when he was a child and had loved them well. He -thought of the hosts who had loved the church bells, -who loved them yet; of the sweetness and peace -and musical memory they were to many—to very -many; of the thousand associations, hovering like -overtones, thoughts of old faces, old scenes, old -gladnesses. He saw old, peaceful faces of men and -women who had made their religion a religion of -love and had loved the church bells. Waves of fragrant -memories came to Aderhold himself—days -of a serious, quiet childhood when he had pondered -over Bible stories; when in some leafy garden corner, -or on his bed at night, he had gone in imagination -step by step through that drama of Judea, -figuring himself as a boy who followed, as, maybe, a -younger brother of the beloved John. It came back -to him—as, indeed, it had never left him—the -soft and bright and good, the pristine part, the -Jesus part, the natural part. <i>Do unto others as thou -wouldst have others do unto you</i>—<i>Love thy neighbour -as thyself</i>—<i>I say unto you until seventy times seven -times</i>—</p> - -<p>The church bells! The church bells! But they -had swung him here into this narrow place and dark, -and they would swing him into a darker and a narrower. -They had swung Joan Heron there where -she stood against the wall.... The many and the -many and the many they had rung and swung to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span> -torture, infamy, and death! The church bells! They -rang in the name of a gentle heart, but they rang -also for the savage and poor guesses, the ferocities, -the nomad imagination of an ancient, early people. -They rang for Oriental ideas of despot and slave, -thrones and princes, glittering reward of eternal, -happy indolence, fearful punishment of eternal physical -torment and ignominy! They rang head beneath -the foot, and he that raiseth voice against this Order, -not his body only, but his soul and his memory -shall be flayed!... Palestine or England, what did -it matter? Caiaphas or the Christian Church?... -The searching, questing spirit that, age by age, lifted -from the lower past toward the light of further -knowledge, larger scope—and the past that, age -by age, hurled its bolts and let its arrows fly and -rang its iron bells against that spirit.... The bells -rang and rang. He heard them sweet and softened -across the years and knew that many loved them -and held them holy; he heard them ring, jubilantly, -above many a martyr’s stake, massacre, war, and -torture chamber, ring the knell of just questioning, -ring the burial, for yet longer and yet longer, of the -truth of things; and knew that many, and those not -the least worthy, must abhor them. He had loved -them, too, but to-day he loved them not. They -clanged with a hoarse old sound of savage gong and -drum and tube calling to the sacrifice....</p> - -<p>Between morning and midday the door opened -and his red-faced, wry-mouthed friend of the Dutch<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span> -wars appeared. “Two of the commissioners would -talk with you.” They climbed the stairs leading -from the darkness, and passed again through that -long and narrow room. But though there were prisoners -here, Joan Heron was not among them. The -gaoler turned to the left and, opening a door, signed -to him to enter a fair-sized, well-lighted room where -were chairs and a table. The light dazzled him, -coming from the almost night underfoot. When his -vision cleared he saw that the two who awaited him -were the minister of Hawthorn and Master Harry -Carthew.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER XIX</h2> - -<p class="pch">ADERHOLD AND CARTHEW</p> - -<p class="pn1"><span class="smcap">Master Clement</span> sat, tense and straight, spiritually -girded to meet Satan and his legionaries. -Harry Carthew was standing when Aderhold entered -the room, but immediately he came and sat -beside the minister, his eyes, deep-set in a pale, fever-wasted -countenance, regarding, not unsteadily, the -prisoner. He had risen from his bed but a week ago; -this was the first time he had ridden to the town. -There was something strange in his countenance, -a look now vacillating, now fixed and hardened. He -held his gloves in one hand and drew them through -the other with a repeated motion.</p> - -<p>“Give you good-day, Master Aderhold,” he said -in a controlled, toneless voice.</p> - -<p>“Give you good-day, Master Carthew.”</p> - -<p>The minister’s strong sing-song pierced the air. -“Thou guilty and wretched man! We have left -thee so long to hug thy own mind because there -was much work elsewhere to do! To-day we would -have thee bethink thyself. Thy sorcery at the Oak -Grange and in Hawthorn Forest and elsewhere is -wholly discovered! Thy fellows in iniquity are all -taken, and sufficient have confessed to set thee at -the stake! Why continue to deny—adding so to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span> -heat of that hell which awaits thee—thy doings -in this nature? What use to say that thou didst not, -leaving thy double in the constable’s hands, return -in the storm upon the Hawthorn road, and by the -power of Satan affront and stay and with thy devil-furnished -dagger wound Master Harry Carthew?”</p> - -<p>“What use, indeed!” said Aderhold. “And yet -I say it.”</p> - -<p>“Then,” said Master Clement, and the veins -upon his forehead began to swell, “thou art a foolish -poor atheist! What! when thou art compact of -denial, and will be lost from earth and heaven because -of that, dost think that one denial more will -serve thee? Come! Thou struckest the blow, we -know. What witch had come at thy call and was -with thee, standing on the hill brow, weaving and -beckoning the storm?”</p> - -<p>“What witch?” echoed Aderhold, startled. “Nor -I was there nor any other!”</p> - -<p>Harry Carthew had not ceased to draw the gloves -held in one hand through the other. He sat with -downcast eyes, wasted and sombre, more wasted, -more haggard, and overlaid with the dull tint of -tragedy than Aderhold himself. He spoke now with -a flushed cheek. “Let that go by! It matters not -what hand struck me in the side that night—” He -turned on Aderhold. “That which I must know, and -will know, I tell you—” Shaken by passion he -pushed back his chair, and rising moved with a disordered -step the length of the room.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span></p> - -<p>Master Clement could not let pass the first part of -his speech. “Not so, Harry Carthew! What! Matters -not that you should be brought to death’s door -by the stroke of a wizard misbeliever—”</p> - -<p>Carthew again approached the table. “It matters -not, I say. Unless—” He stood looking fixedly at -Aderhold, the breath coming quickly from between -his lips. “It has been confessed that you met these -witches and wantoned with them at the sabbats in -Hawthorn Wood.... Now, I have been sick and -my senses wandering, and I have come but lately -back into this enquiry. Much has happened—much -has been done—much has been laid bare that -I knew naught of. In particular—” He broke -away, walked again the length of the room; then -returning, stood above Master Clement in his great -chair and urged some course in an undertone.</p> - -<p>Master Clement first demurred, then, though -without alacrity, acquiesced. “Is it well for you to -be alone with him? I tell you the Devil hath such -wiles—But since you wish it, I will go—I will go -for a short while.” He heaved his slight, black -figure from the chair, and, moving stiffly, quitted -the room. The gaoler stood yet at the door, but, at -a sign from Carthew, without, not within, the room.</p> - -<p>The squire’s brother had his own strength. It -exhibited itself now. He stilled his hurried breathing, -ceased the nervous motion of his hands, indefinably -broadened and heightened his frame, and -became the strong, Puritan country gentleman, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span> -future officer of Ironsides. Whatever there was in -him of stanch and firm and good so struggled with -what was darkly passionate that, for these minutes -at least, there rose on the horizon something that -was not the tempest-tossed ship of many months. -The masts seemed to cease to bend, the anchor to -hold again.</p> - -<p>He stood within five feet of Aderhold. He had -moved so that the table was no longer between them. -In doing so, the attitude of advantage and mastership -had been lost. The two stood on a level floor, -with no conventional judgement bar between them. -If in Carthew, beneath murk and tempest, there -appeared for the moment something basic, justified, -and ultimate, in Aderhold no less character -unveiled its mass. He stood in chains, but they -seemed ribbons of mist. It was he that was metal -and real, and with a sudden loom and resistive force -sent back, broken, doubts and fantastic violences of -thought and ascription. Though for a short time -only, yet for that time, the tattered farrago of superstitions, -hanging in Carthew’s mind like mouldering -banners of wars whose very reason was forgot, -shrunk and shrivelled until they seemed but featureless -dust. For a time he ceased, standing here, to believe -in Aderhold’s attendance at sabbats, brewings -of poison from baleful herbs, toads, spiders, and -newts, and midnight conspirings in the interests of -the Kingdom of Satan. Even the acknowledged, -monstrous sin, the extravagant, the unpardonable,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span> -the monarch and includer of all—even the enormity -of Unbelief—wavered in his mind, grew unsubstantial. -There was a fact of great force before -him, a mass, a reality.... But if, for one larger, -saner moment, he rejected belief in a supernatural -bond of evil linking together Aderhold and Joan -Heron, he by no means did this with the possibility -of other bonds—evil also if they existed between -these two—evil to him as wormwood, darkness, -and madness!</p> - -<p>“In particular,” he said, in a voice that thickened -as he went on, “I am told that they have taken Joan -Heron. I had never thought of that—of her coming -under suspicion.... I had never thought of that. -I do not yet believe her to be a witch—though indeed -they bring all manner of accusation and proof -against her—but I will not yet believe it.... But -I will have from thee what has been thy power over -her! Tell me that, thou atheist!”</p> - -<p>“My power over her has been naught and is -naught. I have spoken with her seldomer than I -have spoken with you. I have had no association -with her. Why she should be in this gaol I know -not.”</p> - -<p>“It is proved that the morning after you were -lodged here she came into this square, and stood -before this prison, making signs.”</p> - -<p>“I know naught of that. What does she say herself?”</p> - -<p>“She says that she had walked to the castle to see<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span> -one there, and coming back, paused but a moment in -the square. She says she made no signs.”</p> - -<p>“And is it so hard to believe what she says?”</p> - -<p>Carthew drew a heavy and struggling breath. -“There is a passion, I think, that teacheth all human -beings to lie.... It is said, and loudly, that -you came to Heron’s cottage by night, and that -she went to the Oak Grange by night, and that you -were paramours.”</p> - -<p>“It is false. I neither went so to Heron’s cottage -nor did she come so to the Grange, nor were we paramours.”</p> - -<p>“That day I found you together in Hawthorn -Wood—”</p> - -<p>“Do you remember what I said to you? That was -the truth.”</p> - -<p>“Not one hour afterward I was told that often—oh, -often and often!—you walked together in -the forest.”</p> - -<p>“Then you were falsely told. It was not so.”</p> - -<p>“Was the truth—and ‘is’ the truth.—You -are earnest to clear her from every shadow of association -with you. Why?”</p> - -<p>“Why?” Aderhold’s eyelids flickered. “Why? -It seems to me easy to know why. I was not born -of so low condition that I would see the innocent -dragged to a place like this.”</p> - -<p>A moment’s dead silence; then Carthew spoke -with a regathered and dangerous passion. “Others -are here—dragged here for their own sinful activities,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span> -and accused likewise of being your hail fellows -and boon companions. There are here a youth to -whom it is said you taught atheism, and Mother -Spuraway and Grace Maybank and your housekeeper -at the Grange and others. Do you grieve for -them that they are here?”</p> - -<p>“Aye,” said Aderhold; “I grieve for them. -Piteous, wronged souls! I tell you, I have had -naught to do with them, nor they with me!”</p> - -<p>Carthew’s voice quivered, and he struck one hand -into the other. “Words are locked doors, but not the -voice with which the words are uttered! ‘Piteous -wronged souls’ that my gentleman born of no low -condition feels grief for and would deliver if he -might from gaol and judgement—and Joan Heron -whom his voice only trembles not before, only -caresses not because he would guard her from the -ruin of his favour!—What good to loom there against -me and thrust that, too, from you? You love her! -You love her! And now I will know if she loves you! -And when I know that I will know what I shall do!”</p> - -<p>“You are mad! Her life and mine touch not, -save as this Hawthorn music jangles our names together! -I shall presently be dead. I know it, and -you know it. Leave her living, her and these others! -You have the power. Leave them living!”</p> - -<p>“Power!” the other burst forth. “I have no -power to save her. She is bound with a hundred -cords! Had I not fallen ill I might have—or I -might have not— But now it is too late. I cannot!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span>” -His helplessness was real enough, and it made—if -he would not feel it too crushingly—a dark -bubbling-up of heat, violence, murky and passionate -substance a necessity to him. He gave it way.</p> - -<p>Aderhold saw the change, the resurgence. He -made with his chained hands a stately and mournful -gesture. “As it will be!” he said.</p> - -<p>The other burst forth. “Aye, I believe—I believe -that you have poisoned and corrupted her, and -that there is truth in every word they say! Now as I -am a baptised man there is truth! For you are an -unbeliever and God’s enemy! And is not God’s -enemy of necessity black and corrupt and a liar to -the last particle of his being, to the last hair of his -head, to the paring of his nails! More—you have -stood there weaving a spell to make me listen and -well-nigh believe! Well, your spell will not hold me!—As -God liveth I hold it to be true that you met by -night in Hawthorn Forest—”</p> - -<p>“Look at me!” said Aderhold. “That is as true as -that it was I who struck a dagger into you on a -Sunday night! <i>Now</i> you know how true it is!”</p> - -<p>Carthew gave back a step and went deadly white. -There was within him that root of grace that he had -risen from his sick bed with his first madness lessened -and his mind set on managing a correction in -the minds alike of Hawthorn and the commission. -In the first wild turmoil and anger, pushing home -under the half-moon from Heron’s cottage, blood -staining his doublet and his head beginning to swim,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span> -he had seized—it coming to him upon some blast of -the wind that he must find and presently give a reason -for his condition—he had seized the first dark -inspiration. It had answered—he had found on -stepping from weeks of stupor and delirium that it -had answered so well and thoroughly that now—always -below the Unbelief and Blasphemy—it was -one of the main counts against the physician. He -had thought to be able to cast hesitancy and doubt -on his original assertion. It was dark—the figure -was cloaked—it might not have been the leech.... -He found that he could corrupt no one’s belief that it -was the leech—Hawthorn, his brother, Master -Clement, the commission, all were unshakable. He -knew not himself how to shatter their conviction. He -could not so injure his own name and fame, the -strict religion, the coming England, the great services -which he meant yet to perform, as to stand and -say, “I lied.” He could see that even if he said it, he -would not be believed. They would say, “Your -fever still confuses your head.” Or they might say, -“They are casting their spells still.” Or they might -ask, “Who, then, struck you?”... It was impossible.... -Even did they believe it, what would it -alter? Nothing! The apostate and sorcerer was -in any event doomed. A straw more or less would -make no difference. Surely one out of the circle of -God’s mercy need not be too closely considered.... -But he paled with the issue thrown so by the man -himself between them.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span></p> - -<p>He paled; then desperately opened the gates to -anger the restorative, and jealousy that shredded -shame to the winds. Moreover, there flashed into -his soul in storm a suspicion. “Who struck me? -Knowest thou <i>that</i>? If thou knowest that, then, -indeed—”</p> - -<p>But Aderhold knew not that. He stood with -folded arms and a steady face. It was now to summon -the ancient virtue, to play truly the Republican, -the free man, now to summon courage for -others. Life! Life! And what men and women had -suffered would be suffered again. And still the ether -sprang clear and time stretched endlessly, and what -was lost here might be found there. He looked at -Harry Carthew with a steadfast face, and reckoned -that the younger man was unhappier than he.</p> - -<p>The door opened with a heavy sound and Master -Clement reappeared. Carthew flung himself toward -him, his face distorted. “Naught—naught! And -now I think the worst—I tell you I think the -worst—”</p> - -<p>“I have always thought the worst,” said Master -Clement. “Send him hence now, and let us see these -others.”</p> - -<p>... Aderhold moved before the red-faced, wry-mouthed -gaoler through the dark passageway and -down the stair, back to the chill and darkness of his -dungeon. Within it, the gaoler made a moment’s -pause before he should turn and, departing, shut -the thick door with the sound of a falling slab of a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span> -sepulchre. He stood, to the eye a rude and portentous -figure, but to the inward vision giving off at -times relieving glints.</p> - -<p>“Everything goes,” he said in a deep and rusty -voice, “by looking at more than just itself. In another -day in England or in another country to-day, -you’d have been racked or put to the scarpines till, -when they wanted you, we’d have had to carry you!”</p> - -<p>“That’s true enough,” said Aderhold. “One -should have a grateful heart!... True enough—as -I know—as I know!”</p> - -<p>“It’s ten days to assizes,” said the gaoler. “It -isn’t lawful to put folk to the question in England—though -if you stand mute, there’s <i>peine forte et -dure</i>—and of course nobody’s going to do anything -that isn’t lawful! But you know yourself there are -ways—”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” said Aderhold. “Do you mean that they -will be used?”</p> - -<p>But the gaoler grew surly again. “I don’t know -anything except that they want your confession. -They’ve got a story that’s going to be sold in chap-books -all over England—and ballads made—and -of course they want all the strange things in. It’s like -the pictures of George and the Dragon—the more -dreadful the dragon, the taller man is the George! -The town’s all abuzz—with the King writing a -learned letter, and the bishop coming and the Witch -Judge.—They want a dreadful dragon and the tallest -kind of George!”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span></p> - -<p>“I see,” said Aderhold. “Even the dragon, the -spear at his throat, expected to flatter!—O Diogenes! -let us laugh, if we die for it!”</p> - -<p>“Anan?” said the gaoler. “Well, it stands that -way.”</p> - -<p>The door shut behind him, grating and heavy. -That it stood that way Aderhold found in the days -that followed....</p> - -<p>It drew toward assizes. Five days before the time -he found himself one late afternoon, after a weary, -weary hour of facing the commission, again in the -long, dusky prison room where he had seen Joan. -He knew now that it was a kind of antechamber, a -place where prisoners were drawn together to wait -occasions. More than once during these last days -he had been kept here for minutes at a time, and -sometimes others had been here and sometimes -not. But Joan Heron never. One day he had seen -Dorothy, and in passing had managed a moment’s -word. “Dorothy, Dorothy! I am sorry—” Dorothy -had gasped and shrunk aside. “Oh, wicked -man! Oh, Master Aderhold—” He had seen also -the youth with a clear passion for knowledge to -whom he had lent books and talked of Copernicus -and Galileo. This one had not been fearful of him.</p> - -<p>To-day he saw neither this youth nor Dorothy. -But suddenly, as he stood waiting his gaoler’s leisure, -he was aware of Joan Heron.... From somewhere -came a red sunset light, and it followed and -enwrapped her as she moved. She was moving with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span> -her arm in the grasp of a man of a curious and sinister -look—moving by the wall at the end of the -room—moving across, then back again, across -again and back, across and back.... Aderhold drew -near, and it was as though an iron hand closed hard -upon and wrung his heart.</p> - -<p>Joan went very slowly, dragging her limbs, more -haled by the man than moving of volition. Her -form swayed, seemed as if all and only its desire was -to sink together, fall upon the earth and lie there -with time and motion ended in one stroke. Her -head was sunken forward, her eyes closed.</p> - -<p>The man shook her savagely. “No sleeping!—When -you are willing to tell your witch deeds, then -you shall sleep!”</p> - -<p>“Joan! Joan!” cried Aderhold. He moved beside -the two. The man looked at him but, stupid or curious, -neither thrust him off nor dragged his charge -away. It was but for a moment.</p> - -<p>Joan opened her eyes. “You?” she said. “All I -want is to sleep, sleep—”</p> - -<p>Her face was ghastly, exhausted. Aderhold -uttered a groan. “Do they not let you sleep either?” -she said. “Five days, five nights—and I am -thirsty, too.”</p> - -<p>He managed to touch her hand. “Joan, Joan—”</p> - -<p>She looked at him with lustreless eyes. “The -others have all made up something to confess. But -though I die, I will not. They may twist a cord -around my head and I will not.” A spasm crossed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span> -her face. “Of their vileness they may set the witch-pricker -on me and I will not.” Her voice, monotonous -and low, died away. The man haled her by -the arm, forcing her to walk. She reeled against -him. “Sleep ... sleep. Oh, let me sleep!” A door -opened. The man with her looked up, nodded, -put his hands on both her shoulders and pushed -her toward it. Her eyes closed again, her head sank -forward. Together the two vanished, leaving to -Aderhold a sense of midnight and the abyss.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER XX</h2> - -<p class="pch">THE WITCH JUDGE</p> - -<p class="pn1"><span class="smcap">The Witch Judge</span> sat high; beside him his circuit -fellow who was a nonentity; a step or two lower -a row of local magistrates. The hall was large and -high,—time-darkened, powdered with amber sunshine -entering through narrow windows. The commission -that had so zealously discharged its duties -had a place of honour. The bishop was seated as -high as the judge, around him those of the clergy -who did not sit with the commission. The earl was -away from the castle, but at an early moment in the -proceedings there came in his kinsman, Sir Richard. -One of the justices whispered to the nonentity-judge, -who whispered to the Witch Judge. The -Witch Judge stopped short in a foaming and thunderous -speech and waited until the earl’s kinsman -should be seated. His air recognized the importance -of the entrance; he slightly inclined his enormous, -grizzled head, then returned to his hurtling thunders.</p> - -<p>The jury sat in its place. Farmers and tradesmen, -it sat a stolid twelve, and believed implicitly that one -who said that there was truth in the Bible, and also -that which was not truth must be hanged or burned. -What else was there to do with him? It had as firm<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span> -an assurance that your misbeliever was always your -necromancer. Indeed, you exhibited and proved the -wickedness of his unbelieving by the nauseous ill of -his conduct. That was why examiners and commissions -sought always until they found the thread that -led to Satan’s visible ownership. As for the Hawthorn -witches—the jury saw them hanging in a row, -and purposed buying the ballads that would certainly -be made.</p> - -<p>The hall was crowded. It was the most exciting -kind of trial that could happen—barring only, -perhaps, an occasional case of <i>lèse majesté</i>. But this -was also <i>lèse majesté</i>. They all saw God as a King -with a gold crown and throne and court; and Satan -as a derision-covered rebel, and his imps and servants -very ugly—when they were not at times very -beautiful—and doom like a Traitor’s Gate, and -hell a Tower from which there was never any coming -forth.... And it was good to feel such loyal subjects, -and to marvel and cry out, “Eh, sirs! To -think of any thinking that!”... The hall was -crowded, hot, and jostling. Young and old were here, -full means and narrow means, lettered and unlettered, -town and country,—for many walked each day -from Hawthorn,—birth and the commonalty, they -who held with the Episcopacy, and they who were -turning Puritan, zealots and future sectaries, shepherds -and sheep! And the neighbours of the accused—as -many as could get here—and those who had -sat with them in Hawthorn Church—and the witnesses<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span> -and sufferers, fresh numbers of these being -continually discovered. Now the hall held its breath -while a witness was being questioned, or the counsel -for the Crown spoke, or the Witch Judge thundered, -and now it buzzed and hummed like the bees that -they said were bewitched. Heat, many bodies in contact -and a mist of breaths, an old, old contagion of -opinion old as savagery....</p> - -<p>The Witch Judge was to most a fearful delight. -No silent, listening, seldom-speaking judge was he! -He had a voice like rolling thunder and an animus -against just those wrongs judgement upon which -had swelled his reputation. He overbore; he thundered -in where Jove would have left matters to lesser -divinities; he questioned, answered, tried, and -judged. He loved to hear his own voice and took -and made occasions. Nor would he hasten to the -end, but preferred to draw matters out in long reverberations. -He was prepared to give a week, if -need be, to this trial which was concluded ere he -took his seat. In all, in the Hawthorn matter, there -were eight folk to be tried. Destroy one, destroy all, -principal and accessories, the whole hung together! -But he was prepared with devices and flourishes, and -for each soul on trial specific attention and cat-and-mouse -play, for the Witch Judge loved to show his -variousness.... The practice of the age was everywhere -elastic enough, but in no trials so licensed as in -such as this. What need for scruples when you dealt -with Satan?... No counsel was allowed the prisoners.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span> -If ever there was floating in the air a notion -that the judge should be counsel for prisoners, -guarding them from injustice and oppression, it had -made no lodgement in this judge’s ear.</p> - -<p>The writ <i>de hæretico comburendo</i>! The Witch Judge -thundered forth the text of it, then preached his -sermon. This wretched man, this wicked leech, this -miscreant, blasphemer, and infidel had made confession -of his crime of apostasy—the most enormous -under heaven—confessing it without tears, -shame, or penitence! Confessing! nay, avowing, -upholding—The Witch Judge glowed fuliginous; -his voice of horror seemed to come from the caverns -of the earth. “He denieth the actuality of the Holy -Trinity—he saith that the world was not made in -six days and is not composed and constructed as set -forth in the Holy Scriptures—he refuseth to believe -in the remission of sins by the shedding of blood—No -language nor tongues,” cried the Witch Judge, -“can set forth the enormity of his error, sin, and -crime! Let him burn, as God saith he will burn, -through eternity and back again!” The phrase -caught the fancy of the throng. It came back in a -deep and satisfied murmur. <i>Through eternity and -back again.</i></p> - -<p>On crackled and roared the Witch Judge’s thunder. -Convict by manifold testimony and impeccable -witnesses, and wholly and terminably convict by his -own confession without violence, it remained—the -authority of Holy Religion and the Ecclesiastical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span> -Court being present in the person of my Lord Bishop—it -remained but to give judgement and pass sentence -upon the apostate! In regard to his apostasy. -But this wicked leech rested also under a charge of -sorcery—sorcery of the blackest—sorcery which he -obdurately denied! Let him, then, before judgement -given, be tried for his sorcery—he with these -wretched others, for Satan hunteth not with one -beagle, but with many!</p> - -<p>The Witch Judge half rose, puffed himself forth, -became more than ever a bolt-darting Jupiter. -Trials for heresy, apostasy, blasphemy were not in -themselves wholly his element. But let them darken -and lower—as indeed, they almost always did darken -and lower—into questions of actual physical contact -and trade dealings with the Hereditary Foe, then he -was in his element!... Wizards and witches! The -Witch Judge shook his hand above the prisoners. -“And let not any think Witchcraft to be other or less -than Apostasy, Idolatry, and Blasphemy! If Apostasy -is the Devil’s right hand, Witchcraft makes his -left—his left? Nay, his right and most powerful, -for here is your apostate in action—here is your unbeliever -upon his Lord Satan’s business!” Witchcraft! -Witchcraft! The Witch Judge paced around, -threw lurid lights upon the crime he battened on. -His tribute of huge words rolled beneath the groined -roof and shook the hearts of the fearful. There came -back from the crowd a sighing and muttering, half-ecstatic, -half-terrified, low sound. The word of God—the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span> -command of the Most High, taken from his -own lips—the plainest order of the King of Kings.—<i>Thou -shall not suffer a witch to live</i>.... Statute of -the first year of our present Gracious Sovereign, our -lord, King James—<i>All persons invoking any evil -spirit, or consulting, covenanting with, entertaining, -employing, feeding, or rewarding any evil spirit, or taking -up dead bodies from their graves to be used in any -witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment, or killing or -otherwise hurting any person by such infernal arts, are -declared guilty of felony without benefit of clergy and -shall suffer death.</i> He had a way of uttering “death” -that made the word a distillation of all the suffering -man could make for man.</p> - -<p>Preliminary thunders from the Witch Judge -ceased. Counsel for the Crown came afterwards like -a whistling wind. The long Hawthorn Witch Trial -began, and stretched from midsummer day to day. -To many it afforded an exciting, day-by-day renewed -entertainment; to some it was a fearful dream; -to a very few, perhaps, it seemed a long, dull, painful -watch by mortality’s fever bed. Once Aderhold -caught the gaze of the earl’s kinsman upon him. -The eyes of the two met and agreed as to what was -passing, then Aderhold looked away.</p> - -<p>The prisoners had their appointed space. At -times they were all brought together here; at times -the greater number were withdrawn, leaving one or -two to be examined separately or together. The heat -and the light struck against them, and the waves of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span> -sound; from one side came the booming of the -judge’s voice or the dry shrilling of the king’s lawyer; -from the other the whisper of the crowd that meant -to have witch blood. There were Aderhold, the -youth to whom he had given books, the boy of sixteen, -old Dorothy’s nephew, Dorothy herself, a halfwitted -woman from a hut between the Grange and -the North-End Farm, Grace Maybank, Mother -Spuraway, and Joan Heron—eight in all.</p> - -<p>Mother Spuraway—Now torture was not allowed -in England, though on the Continent and in -Scotland it flared in witch trials to its fullest height. -Mother Spuraway, therefore, had not been tortured—no -more than Aderhold, no more than Joan, no -more than others. But it was allowable, where confession -did not come easily, to hasten it with fasting -from bread, water, and sleep—all these being withholdings, -not inflictings. There might be, too, insistent, -long-continued questionings and threats and a -multitude of small gins and snares. Mother Spuraway -had been long weeks in gaol, and she was old -and her faculties, once good, were perhaps not now -hard to break down. At any rate, she had a ghastly -look and a broken. Since she trembled so that she -could not stand, they put her into a chair.</p> - -<p>“Now answer strictly the questions asked you, -if you have any hope of mercy!”</p> - -<p>Mother Spuraway put her two trembling hands to -her head. “Mercy? Yes, sirs, that is what I want. -Mercy.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Very well, then! Look on this man and tell us -what you know of him.”</p> - -<p>The clerks’ pens began to scratch.</p> - -<p>Mother Spuraway’s gaze was so wandering that -while it came across Aderhold, it went on at once to -a cobweb above the judge’s chair. “He is the -Devil,” she said.</p> - -<p>“You mean the Devil’s servant.”</p> - -<p>“Yes—oh, yes! Devil’s servant. I mean just -what Your Honours want.”</p> - -<p>The Witch Judge thundered at her. “Woman! it -is not what <i>we</i> want. You are to speak the truth. -Truth-speaking is what we want.”</p> - -<p>Mother Spuraway’s head nodded, her eyes fallen -now from the cobweb to the judge’s robe. “Yes, sirs—yes, -sirs. You shall have what you want. Oh, yes, -sirs!”</p> - -<p>“She asserts,” said the counsel for the Crown, -“that she tells the truth.—You were used to going -to sabbats with this man?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, sirs,—sabbats, sabbats, sabbats, sabbats—”</p> - -<p>“Give her wine,” said the Witch Judge. “She is -old. Let her rally herself. Give her wine.”</p> - -<p>A gaoler set a cup to her lips and she drank. -“Now,” said the Crown, “tell us of these sabbats—circumstantially.”</p> - -<p>Mother Spuraway, revived by the wine, looked -from floor to roof and roof to floor and at the commission -and the Witch Judge and the bishop, and at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span> -the motes in a broken shaft of light. “We danced -about the burned cot—all taking hands—so! -Sometimes of dark nights we went <i>widdershins</i> -around Hawthorn Church—sometimes it was -around the fairy oak at the Oak Grange. Sometimes -we danced and sometimes we flew. We rode in -the air. I had an oaken horse—and Grace had an -elmen horse and Dorothy had a willow horse, and -Elspeth No-Wit had a beechen horse, and Marget -Primrose had a horse of yew—”</p> - -<p>There was a movement among the commission. -“Marget Primrose,” exclaimed Squire Carthew, -“died years ago!”</p> - -<p>“She came back. Marget had a yew horse—and -I had an oaken horse—and there were other horses, -but I never learned their names. And there were -green men—”</p> - -<p>“Was this man in green?”</p> - -<p>“No, no! He had on a doctor’s cloak. Sometimes -he fiddled for us when Satan grew tired.”</p> - -<p>“Then he was a chief among you?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, yes, a chief among us.—Sometimes we -changed to bats and mice and harmless green frogs -and hares and owls and other creatures—”</p> - -<p>“You did that when you were about to go to -folk’s houses or fields to injure them?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, sirs, yes, yes—about to injure them. -Then I was a dog, and Grace a little brown hare, and -Dorothy a great frog, and Elspeth No-Wit a bat, -and Marget Primrose—And we brewed poisons and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span> -charms in a great cauldron inside the burned cot, -but at the fairy oak we made little figures out of -river clay and stuck them full of pins. And there we -had a feast—”</p> - -<p>“And this man?”</p> - -<p>“He sat on the green hillock beside Satan, and -Satan had a black book. He gave it to him to read -in while we were dancing and eating and daffing -with the green men—and then the cock crew and -we all flew home.”</p> - -<p>“There were many sabbats?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, many!”</p> - -<p>“And this man was always among you?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, always among us.”</p> - -<p>“You say he read in a black book. But he likewise -danced and wantoned as did the green men?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, yes! The pretty green men.”</p> - -<p>“Be careful now. With whom especially did he -work this iniquity? Whom did he single out at each -sabbat?”</p> - -<p>“Whom?—I do not know whom.... Sabbats? -There are no such things. Who would leave home at -night to wander round oak trees and burned cots?—Oh, -home, home! Oh, my hut! I want to see my -hut!” cried Mother Spuraway. “Oh, good gentlemen! -Oh, Your Worships! Oh, Squire Carthew—Master -Clement!—Won’t you let me go home? A -poor old woman that never harmed a soul—”</p> - -<p>The Witch Judge’s voice came thundering down. -“Her mind is wandering!—Thou wretched woman!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span> -Dost wish to be taken back to thy prison, and -urged anew to confess?”</p> - -<p>But apparently Mother Spuraway did not wish -that. She put up her two hands and said, “No, no!”—then, -shrunken and shuddering, begged for more -wine. They gave it to her.... “Now, whom did -this sorcerer take in his arms? Was it the <i>maiden</i> of -your company?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, oh, yes! The maiden.”</p> - -<p>“The maiden of your company was Joan Heron?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, Joan Heron.”</p> - -<p class="p2">The shafts of light were shortening, the earth wheeling -toward sunset. Without clanged the bells of the -great church—it was late afternoon. The people -who had far to walk, though loath for the entertainment -to cease, yet approved when the court rose for -that day. Morning would not be long, and they purposed -returning most early in order that good places -might be got. The hall and the square without -seethed and sounded with the dispersing crowd.</p> - -<p>Near at hand was the prison, its black mass facing -the great square, the pillory in its shadow; beyond, -slanting down to the river, the field where they -raised the gallows. The prisoners when they were -removed were taken, guarded, along by the wall, -into the dark, gaping prison mouth.</p> - -<p>Joan walked beside Mother Spuraway. In the -last three or four days the hand of withholding had -been lifted from the prisoners so that they might get<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span> -their strength.... Joan walked with a colourless, -thin cheek and shadowed eyes, but walked steadily. -But Mother Spuraway could not drag her limbs -across the stones; a gaoler held her roughly up with -a force that drew a moan. Presently, his grasp -relaxing, she stumbled again and fell. Joan stooped -and raised her, then with her arm about her bore -her on. “Thank’ee, my pretty maid,” said Mother -Spuraway. “I’ll do as much for you when you are -old!”</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER XXI</h2> - -<p class="pch">THE WITCH</p> - -<p class="pn1"><span class="smcap">The</span> morrow came and went in heat and tenseness -and excitement. The third day arrived and passed -with no lessening. The fourth day came and the -fever ran more high than before. The Crown, the -jury, and the Witch Judge, the throng nodding -approval, had now checked off Mother Spuraway, -Grace Maybank, Dorothy and her nephew, Elspeth -No-Wit, and the youth. It remained on this day to -concentrate upon and finally dash to earth the main -sorcerer and that one who patently had been his -paramour and adjutant—the “maiden” of the -wicked crew. There were many witnesses and much -wild testimony. Small facts were puffed out to -become monstrous symbols. Where facts failed, the -inflamed and morbid imagination invented. It was -strange hearing to the two who had dwelled at the -Oak Grange and Heron’s cottage....</p> - -<p>They questioned Elspeth No-Wit. “You had a -meeting the night before the leech was taken?”</p> - -<p>Elspeth laughed and nodded.</p> - -<p>“What did you do there?”</p> - -<p>“We had a big kettle and a great fire. Everybody -dropped what she loved best in the kettle. We -played and clapped hands and jumped as high as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span> -the tree-tops. When we clapped our hands, it -thundered, and when we ran around the kettle the -wind blew our clothes away.”</p> - -<p>“You were brewing the storm that broke next -day?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, aye!”</p> - -<p>“The leech and Joan Heron were with you?”</p> - -<p>Elspeth twisted her body and peered around. “Is -that Joan Heron and is that the leech? They ran -round thrice to our once, and they kissed the closest, -and at last they wandered away.”</p> - -<p>Will the smith’s son was called. “You stopped at -Heron’s cottage that Sunday evening?”</p> - -<p>Will stammered, looking wild, hollow-eyed, and -awed. “Aye, I did, please Your Honour!—But I -never would have stopped but that it was storming -so.—My mother was with me, please you, sir.”</p> - -<p>“No one means you any ill.—It was dark under -the clouds without, but there was a light inside the -cottage—a red light?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, sir; bright like firelight.”</p> - -<p>“Hardly, I think, true firelight: a red and strange -light.—It was well after the hour when the leech -had been taken from this Oak Grange?”</p> - -<p>“Aye, Your Honour. ’Twas close to dark.”</p> - -<p>“With the constable and his men, and Master -Carthew riding a part of the way, he must then have -been upon the Hawthorn road, his face set to this -gaol?”</p> - -<p>“He must have been so, sir, but—”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span></p> - -<p>“We are coming to that. It is a fact, is it not, that -witches and warlocks are able to transport themselves, -with their master Satan’s aid, through the -air—and that so swiftly that you cannot see their -flight?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, Your Honour,” said Will. “They fly in -sieves, and sometimes they steal bats’ wings.”</p> - -<p>“Very well. Now you and your mother opened -this cottage gate and went up the path to the door, -and to reach that you had to pass the window. As -you did that, passing close, you naturally put forehead -to the frame, and looked within, and the place -being filled with that red light—”</p> - -<p>“It wasn’t very bright,” said Will. “It was like a -faggot had parted on the hearth, and there was -now a dancing light, and now it was dark. There -was nothing clear, and we heard naught because it -was lightning and thundering—”</p> - -<p>“And you saw—”</p> - -<p>Will moistened his lips. “Yes, sir.—She and a -black man were together—yes, please Your Honour, -standing locked together—”</p> - -<p>“The black man was the leech?”</p> - -<p>“We didn’t know it, then, sir—How could we,” -said Will, “when he was three miles the other side of -Hawthorn with a guard? But I know it now. It was -the leech.—And mother and I went on and knocked -at the door, and she opened it—and there was -nobody there but Joan—Joan and the grey and -white cat.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span></p> - -<p>“You stayed no time in that cottage?”</p> - -<p>“No, sir, please Your Honour. There was that -that frightened us.”</p> - -<p>Will the smith’s son was motioned down. They -set Mother Spuraway again in the eye of the court—Mother -Spuraway, wrecked until she was nigh of the -fellowship of Elspeth No-Wit. “You have told us -that on this Sunday evening you were running in the -shape of a hare through field and copse by the Hawthorn -road. We have obtained from you that you -saw the leech part from his natural body, having -by black magic so blinded the guard that they went -on bearing with them but a shadow, a double, and -yet unsuspecting that cheat. Now tell us what the -sorcerer did.”</p> - -<p>Mother Spuraway plucked at the stuff of her -kirtle. “He mounted in the air.—Storm—storm—break -storm!”</p> - -<p>“He went toward Hawthorn Wood?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, oh, yes! Hawthorn Wood.... Rue around -the burned cot.”</p> - -<p>“That is, toward Heron’s cottage.—A time -passed, and you, crouching then in the hazels by the -road, saw him returning.—Now, mark! Was there -a horseman upon this same Hawthorn road?”</p> - -<p>Mother Spuraway tried to mark, but her mind -was wandering again. She preferred, it seemed, to -talk of when she was a young woman and Spuraway -and she had wandered, hand in hand, in Hawthorn -Wood. But one wrenched her arm, and said something<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span> -in her ear and brought her back with a shiver. -“‘Horseman’? Oh, aye, Your Worships! A great, -noble horseman.”</p> - -<p>“You saw the leech coming across the fields from -the direction of Heron’s cottage, and you saw this -horseman riding through the storm toward Hawthorn -Village. What then?”</p> - -<p>“I ran under the earth,” said Mother Spuraway. -“For I was now a pretty black mole, dressed all in -velvet and blind—blind—blind—blind—”</p> - -<p>It was with a different—oh, a different, different -tone that they questioned Master Harry Carthew -and harkened solicitously to what he had to -tell. All the crowded place leaned forward and listened, -in the hot, slanted gold of the fourth afternoon.... -Joan saw them all, and saw into their -minds prone before the foreknown truth of whatever -Master Carthew was about to recount. She sat like -carven marble and viewed and knew the world she -viewed. She saw Alison and Cecily, Will and his -mother, Goodman Cole, the forester’s wife, Lukin -the carter, the tinker, many others. She saw Master -Clement and all the clergy and gentry of the commission, -the court, the spectators. She saw the -Witch Judge who was going to hang her. And -townspeople with whom she had had acquaintance.... -The vintner who had wished to marry her was -here, pale and of a tremendous inward thankfulness. -And servants from the castle, and the new huntsman.... -All here to see her hunted—her and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span> -others. She felt their tongues go over their lips, and -the warm indrawing of their shoulders and nursing -of their elbows—felt and cared not.</p> - -<p>Carthew was speaking in a hollow, short, determined -voice. If a black lava torrent of passion and -madness was devastating his soul, few enough knew -it of all in that thronged place.... At no previous -time had there been such soundlessness in the hall, -such keyed and strained attention. Hawthorn, at -least, believed that Master Harry Carthew was to -be a great man in England, was to climb high, with -the Bible in his hand. For the town, that was of -another cast of opinion,—if it conceived of him -hardly so highly, if it shrugged its shoulders and -waxed bitter over these mounting Puritans, yet it -felt in its heart that they were mounting and gave -to their personal qualities an uneasy recognition. -It, too, marked Harry Carthew for a coming man—though -it might not hold with Hawthorn that the -fact of Satan’s striking through the sorcerer’s hand -at this life marked a recognition on Satan’s part of -qualities the most dangerous to his sovereignty. -And Carthew was young, and, though yet gaunt and -pale and hardly recovered from that felon blow, of -a manly form and a well-looking face. All through -the long trial he had sat there so evidently poisoned -and suffering—urged now by his brother and now -by others to leave and take his rest, yet never going—sitting -there with his eyes upon this murdering -wizard.... The throng was ready to make him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span> -into the hero, the visible St. George—standing -there now with his spear lifted to give the one last, -needed blow.... There was the dragon, there! the -pale leech and all the wretches with him, and dim -and horrible behind him all his train of evil works, -and Satan horned and hoofed, spreading enormous -bat wings, making the very hall brown and dusky! -Full beside the leech, in all minds now, stood that -most vile witch Joan Heron.</p> - -<p>Carthew’s words were few but explicit. “The sky -was very dark—there seemed more thunder and -lightning than there had been. I was several miles -this side of Hawthorn. I was riding without regarding -the road, my mind being on other things. My -horse stopped short, then reared. I felt the blow. It -was given by a cloaked figure that immediately -vanished.... Yes, it bore resemblance to the leech, -Gilbert Aderhold.”</p> - -<p>The words fell, aimed and deliberate, like the executioner’s -flaming tow upon the straw between the -piled logs. A stillness followed as though the throng -were waiting with parted lips for the long upward -run of the flame. Then out of it came Joan’s voice, -quiet, distinct, clear, pitched loudly enough to reach -from wall to wall. “Thou liar! Know all here that -that man whom Will the smith’s son has called -the black man and saw through my window—that -man”—she stood, her arm outstretched and -her finger pointing—“that man was this man who -speaks to you! Know all here that for weary months<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span> -Master Harry Carthew had pursued and entreated -me who speak to you now—that when he turned -that afternoon upon the Hawthorn road it was -to ride to Heron’s cottage and break in upon me -there! Know that Will the smith’s son, looking -through the window, saw <i>him</i>. But he, hearing -those two knock, and fearing discovery that would -spot his fame, snatched up his cloak and made off -through another door. But he hid not far away, and -when they were gone and darkness had fallen, back -he came, stealing in at night upon a woman alone. -Know all of you here that I wanted not his love. -Know all that we struggled together, and that I -struck him in the side with a hunting-knife. Know -all that he rode from Heron’s cottage to Carthew -House, and to save himself lied as you have heard!”</p> - -<p>She stood an instant longer with her arm outstretched -and her eyes upon Carthew, then slowly -turned, moved past Aderhold, and, taking her place -between Mother Spuraway and Grace Maybank, -leaned her elbow on her knee and her chin on -her hand.</p> - -<p>The Witch Judge’s instantaneous thunder, the -clamour of voices, the hubbub in the hall appeared -to give her no especial concern. When silence was -obtained, and Carthew, white as death, gave a categorical -denial, she only slightly moved her shoulders, -and continued her contemplative gaze upon -this scene and much besides. That if the crowd -could have gotten at her she would most likely have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span> -paid with death at once for her brazen mendacity, -her measureless vile attempt to blacken one whom -the Enemy most evidently feared and hated, appeared -to trouble her neither. She sat as still as -though consciousness were elsewhere....</p> - -<p>The next day it ended—the Hawthorn apostasy-sorcery-witchcraft -trial. Judgement was given, -sentence passed. The court, the crowd, the bishop, -Hawthorn, the town, all seemed well of a mind. -Death for six of the eight. For the youth who read -too much and for the boy, old Dorothy’s nephew, -pillory and imprisonment; but for the six, death. -Burning for the apostate and sorcerer, the leech -Aderhold, though, so squeamish grew the times, he -might be strangled first. For the five witches the -gallows—though it was said that the old woman -Dorothy had sickened with gaol-fever and would -not live to be hanged. The sheriff would see to it -that the execution took place within the month. In -the mean time close prison for the evil-doers, and -some thought, maybe, on how the Church and the -Law for ever overmatched the Devil.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER XXII</h2> - -<p class="pch">ESCAPE</p> - -<p class="pn1"><span class="smcap">Joan</span> sat on the edge of her straw bed, with her arms -around her knees and her eyes upon the blank wall. -For something to do she had been plaiting straws, -making braids of many strands and laying them -beside her in squares and triangles and crosses. -That had palled, and now she was determinedly -using the inner vision. The one thing she was bent -upon was neither to think nor to feel these past days, -weeks, and months, not to think or to feel at all -closer than a year ago. She could bring back, she -could recompose, she could live again, though with -much subtle difference, where she had lived before. -She could image forth, too; she could guide a waking -dream. Now, with all the might that was in her, she -made her prison cell to grow what once as a child she -had seen, the sandy shore of the boundless sea. That -was freedom, that was light and wind and space! -Then she had raced along the beach, and in mind -she ran now, long-limbed, with flying hair, only she -turned not, came not back.... The Joan Heron -here in gaol sat motionless.... One by one she -added the other prisoners, until they all ran away by -the sea beach, all hastening with the cool wind at -their back and the free blue sky before. She drew<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span> -ahead. They were free and running to some happy -land, but their presence made it harder not to think -or feel, and so she ran ahead. Sea and sky, and harm -forgot.... One was running beside her, leaving, too, -the others. She would not image this one plainly, -but they ran and ran, the sand beneath their feet.... -It never occurred to her that this <i>was</i> magic, -nor, if it had occurred, would she have cared. It was -good magic.</p> - -<p>The rainbow vanished, the storm returned. Here -was the creaking, creaking of the dungeon door; -here came again the hateful gaoler, the man who had -watched her that she should not sleep! She did not -turn her head or speak; perhaps to-day he would -put down the jug of water and the crust of bread and -go without attempt at parley.</p> - -<p>But he was standing waiting, his hand upon the -door which he had drawn to behind him. “Hist!” he -said; “Joan Heron!”</p> - -<p>The voice was different. When she had turned -swiftly she saw that it was another man, a lean, -nervous, quaint-faced man in a stained leather jerkin. -Across the years since the huntsman’s house -and the castle wood and the castle and its servants -there shot a memory. “Gervaise!” she said: “Gervaise, -Sir Richard’s man!”</p> - -<p>“Ah,” said Gervaise with a jerk of his head; -“you’ve got a good memory! I hope that others’ -aren’t as good! I’ve been out of these parts for the -length of two Indies voyages.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span></p> - -<p>He opened the door, put out his head and glanced -up and down the passageway, then, with a satisfied -nod, drew back, shut the door, and came close to -Joan. “But I’m Sir Richard’s man still, though not, -I would have you note, to the world—no, not to the -world!—The man who up till now locked and -unlocked this door had a dream of a purse of gold, -and so yesterday he quit the gaol’s service with a -speech to all men that he was sick halfway to death -with a shaking cold palsy! But by good fortune he -had a cousin to slip in his place. I am the cousin—for -the nonce, for the nonce! Hist, Joan; I remember -thee well at thy uncle’s there in the wood! I’ll tell -thee what I once said to him. I said, said I, ‘That -niece of thine’s got courage and wit!’—Joan, see -this bundle!” He placed it beside her upon the -straw.</p> - -<p>“Aye,” said Joan. “What’s in it?”</p> - -<p>“Good, plain apprentice doublet, hose, cap, and -shoon! Scissors likewise to cut long hair.”</p> - -<p>Joan’s hand closed upon it, but she said nothing. -She looked at him with parted lips and a light in her -eyes.</p> - -<p>“Just so!” said Gervaise. “It’s now close to sunset. -At nine of the clock I’ll be here again. Put -everything you have on—put your long cut hair—into -the smallest bundle you may. So, if I win you -forth as a youth, my helper—God blinding them to -the fact that I never brought you in!—they’ll find -no stitch of you to-morrow. ‘The witch—the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span> -witch hath vanished into thin air! No other one -than Master Satan did ever help her forth!’”</p> - -<p>“And when I’m forth?” said Joan.</p> - -<p>“One thing at a time!” answered the new gaoler. -“A before B; bud before flower! Roads may open. -Here’s no road at all.”</p> - -<p>“And that’s true,” said Joan. “But all the -others?”</p> - -<p>Gervaise gazed at her with his head on one side. -“The others—the others! How do you think it -possible that I should make a complete gaol delivery? -It is not possible—not in the least possible.”</p> - -<p>“Why do you choose out me? And I thank you, -Gervaise, but I think that I will not go.”</p> - -<p>Gervaise looked at her with light blue eyes, not -sharp but penetrative, with a kind of basal, earth -understanding. “You listen to me, Joan, and while -you listen, just bear in mind that this is a dangerous -business! Figure some authority out there storming, -‘Where, in Cerberus’s name, is the new gaoler?’ -Keep that in mind, I say, and that time’s gold—gold?—nay, -rubies and diamonds! Now, look you! -’Tis no easy jaunt, forth from this prison and town, -to some land of safety for witches and warlocks! -Naught but courage and wit and strength and good -luck by the armful will make it—and a crowd -would never make it! There are two who are not to -suffer death—but if they tried to flee and were -taken, as, of course, they most likely would be, they -would suffer it! Common sense saith, ‘Those two<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span> -are better where they are.’ The old woman named -Dorothy died to-day. She’s gone anyhow—made -her escape clean, with Death and the scythe and -hourglass. Do you think that Mother Spuraway -could be dragged free—do you think that she could -run and lie hidden and disguise herself, and starve if -need be? For Grace Maybank—she hath pleaded -that she is with child, and is not to be hanged until -the elfling is born. Naught can be done there. And -Elspeth No-Wit sits and laughs, and the sweetest -words would not persuade her forth.” He ceased -speaking and stood with his light blue eyes upon her.</p> - -<p>“There is,” said Joan, “one other.”</p> - -<p>“Aye, aye,” said Gervaise. “Well, you see mine -is the kindly feeling to youward, and Sir Richard’s -is the kindly feeling to himward. Not that Sir -Richard hath not a kindly feeling to youward likewise! -But, I know not why, he hath the greatest -liking for the sorcerer!”</p> - -<p>“Aye,” said Joan. “And after?”</p> - -<p>“In fact,” said Gervaise, “and though I would not -hurt your feelings, making you seem of less importance -to yourself, this is a rescue planned in the first -place for the sorcerer and not for the witch! But -when I am brought in—having, see you, watched -you from a nook in the crowd through the trial—I -say to Sir Richard.... More than my saying, the -sorcerer makes some such catechism as you’ve been -making, and will only have freedom on terms. So -Sir Richard nods and agrees. Double peril! But if<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span> -he will not come forth else? Then I may say that -Sir Richard, too, marked you, if for a witch, then -a brave witch, and that he hath a taste for the -quality.”</p> - -<p>“Do you mean that Master Aderhold escapes this -night?”</p> - -<p>“‘Escapes’!—’escapes’! I know not who escapes. -It’s full of peril. But Humphrey Lantern, -who takes him bread and water, served under Sir -Richard in the wars. He’s weary of turning keys, -and hath an itch to see far countries. I know not; -Fate’s got it all hidden.—But if the stars are -propitious, you might touch another prisoner’s hand -on the dark, windy road.”</p> - -<p>He stopped speaking. Joan took up the braided -straws and laid them again in patterns, then -brushed them aside. She sat with one hand in the -other, her eyes upon the wall. Then she stood up, -tall in her ragged gown. “Thank you, Gervaise! If -it goes wrong, save yourself, for no worse harm can -come to me. I’ll make ready.”</p> - -<p>The sunset light dyed the town, the looping river, -the castle on the hill, the great church, and the prison -a pale red. The glow faded, night came down. -Within the prison every passageway was dim -enough; here a smoky light and there at a distance -another, and all between a wavering dusk. The new -gaoler and a youth, whom he mentioned to one they -met as his nephew and helper, pursued these passages -with a slow step and a halt here and a halt<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span> -there, as the gaoler’s duties presented themselves.... -But at last they turned a corner and saw before -them a low portal. “Win through that and we’re -outside!” muttered Gervaise. “I’ve the key—and -it would make a story, my getting it! Oiled, too.”</p> - -<p>Right and left and behind them they saw no one. -He stopped. The key went in noiselessly, turned -noiselessly, the door opened outward, they felt, -instead of the heavy breath of the gaol, the air of the -wide night. They stepped into an alley, black as -pitch. Gervaise stooped, reinserted the key, and -turned it. “Lock Discovery in overnight, anyway! -Take the key and drop it in the river with your -bundle.”</p> - -<p>Joan touched his arm. “There are two men standing -yonder by the wall.”</p> - -<p>Gervaise nodded. “There’s hope they’re Lantern -and the other. We agreed—”</p> - -<p>They crept toward the two. Hope changed to -certainty. There were some whispered words; then -in the darkness the four figures stole forward, away -from the prison walls that towered like the very -form of Death. The night was black and quiet, but -at the mouth of the alley as they left it for the wide -darkness of the square they heard voices, and staves -striking against the stones, and saw the lanterns of -the watch. The pillory was at hand; they drew into -its shadow, pressing close beneath the platform.</p> - -<p>Swinging lanterns, forms ebon and tawny, footsteps, -voices, approached, seemed to envelop them,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span> -passed, lessened in bulk toward the High Street. -The orange spheres of light dwindled to points, the -voices from frightfully hoarse and loud thinned to a -murmur afar. The four, Gervaise leading, moved -from the pillory, friendly for once, and struck across -the considerable open place. The hour was late and -the townspeople housed. They saw no one in all the -square. But as they came into the shadow of the -great church tower they again heard voices nearing -them—roistering voices of young men, petty gallants -and citizens’ sons, homeward bound from -some place of drinking and outcasts’ favours. “The -church porch,” motioned Gervaise. Like swallows -they sped across and lodged themselves in the -shadow-filled, cavernous place.</p> - -<p>The roisterers came close, elected, indeed, just -here to arrest their steps and finish out a dispute. -“Black eyes are best!” averred one. “Grey eyes? -Faugh! That vilest Hawthorn witch hath grey eyes! -Ha, ha! Eyes like Joan Heron!”</p> - -<p>“That she hath not! They are green. A grey eye is -well enough! That vile witch’s are green.”</p> - -<p>“Grey.”</p> - -<p>“I tell thee I saw them, green and wicked! Green -beneath red gold hair.”</p> - -<p>“Grey! Grey as the sea, and hair like wheat when -it is cut.”</p> - -<p>“Thou fool—”</p> - -<p>“Thou knave—”</p> - -<p>“Thou villain to liken my mistress’s eye to that of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span> -a vile witch and devil’s whore! My sword shall make -thee eat it—”</p> - -<p>“Will it? Will it? Out, tuck—”</p> - -<p>But a third and fourth, wiser or less flushed with -wine, struck between. “Will you have the watch -upon us and be clapped up for whether a vile witch’s -eyes are grey or green? Grey or green or blue or -black or brown, ere the month be gone the crows -will pick them out! Put up your blades!—I told -you so! The watch—”</p> - -<p>True it was that the watch was coming back. The -roisterers fell suddenly into hushed and amicable -converse, began to move, too, from before the -church. But the watch were coming hastily, were -already within eyeshot of the porch. It was not so -dark now, either.</p> - -<p>“The moon is up,” muttered Gervaise. “We -should have been clear of the town—”</p> - -<p>It was rising, indeed, above the housetops. The -watch and the young men were in parley, fifty yards -away. The four from the prison pressed more closely -into the shadow of the pillars. They stood in blackness -and watched the full round moon silver the -houses and the uneven floor of the square. The -moonbeams touched the portal, picked out the carven -figures that adorned it. Watch and the explanatory -tavern group, voices and glowworm lanterns -moved farther, lessened into distance, disappeared -in the dark mouth of some street. Windows had -been opened, householders were looking forth. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span> -needed to wait until all was again peace and sleeping -time.</p> - -<p>Aderhold spoke for the first time since the four -had left the prison alley. The apprentice youth -stood near him. They leaned against the one pillar, -and though they thought not of it, they had among -other seemings, in the lapping light and darkness, -the seeming of two bound to one stake. He spoke in -a whisper. “You are not afraid?”</p> - -<p>“No.”</p> - -<p>“I knew that you would not be. Little worse can -come, and something that is better may.”</p> - -<p>“Yes.... I had rather sink trying.”</p> - -<p>The moon whitened the carvings of the porch. -Grotesque after grotesque came into the light: the -man with the head of a wolf, the woman with a bat -spreading its wings across her eyes, the demons, the -damned, the beatified exulting over the damned, fox -and goat and ape crossed with man and woman. -The silver, calm light turned all from black to grey. -The wind whispered, the nearer stars shone, the -moon travelled her ancient road and threw transformed -sunlight upon the earth. The minutes passed, -the town lay fast asleep.</p> - -<p>Gervaise moved from the porch, the others followed. -They would not pass through the town; they -took a steep street which led them first down to the -river, and then, as steeply mounting, up to the castle -wood. They went in silence, with a rapid step, and -came without mishap under the shadow of the summer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span> -trees. Here was a wall which they climbed, -dropping from its top into fern and brush. Joan -knew the path that they took, a skirting path, -walled with bracken, arched over by oak boughs. -They heard wild things moving, but no human -tongue questioned them. It was cool and dim, and -because the moon was riding high and they must -make all haste, they ran along this path which -stretched a mile and more. Gervaise was light and -spare as a jester; the wry-mouthed, surly, one-time -soldier strong enough, though somewhat rusty in the -joints; Aderhold was a thinker who lived much out -of doors, a leech who walked to his patients, and -where there was need walked fast; Joan, a woman of -Arcady, with a step as light as a panther’s. These -two had behind them prison inaction and weakening, -prison fare, anxiety, despair, strain, and torment. -They were not in health and strength as they -had been. But instinct furnished a mighty spur; if -they must run to live, they would run! They ran in -the scented darkness, the bracken brushing their -arms, the moon sending against them, between the -oak boughs, a silver flight of hurtless arrows. The -mile was overpast, the path widened into a moonlit -vale, the vale swept downward to a fringing cliff, -by day not formidable, but difficult in this gliding, -watery light. The four, with some risk of broken -limbs, swung themselves down by jutting root and -stone, dropped at last a sheer twelve feet, and found -themselves clear of the wood and the castle heights,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span> -clear of the town, out upon the grassy edge of the -London road. It stretched before them, gleaming, -bare, silent as to the feet which even now might be -coming after them, silent as to whether or no they -would outstrip those feet, silent as to the ends that it -would serve. They lay for a minute upon the bank, -breathing hard, regathering force. An owl hooted, -<i>Tu-whoo! Tu-whoo!</i> They rose from the wayside -growth and took the road. It ran so hard and gleaming—it -might be a friend, it might be an enemy! -Over them soared the night, far off they saw sleeping -houses. The air was astir, the shadows of the trees -dancing on the road.</p> - -<p>They measured a mile, two miles. The road -climbed somewhat; before them, in the flooding -moonlight, they saw a gibbet with its arm and down-hanging -chains.</p> - -<p>“I know this place,” said Aderhold.</p> - -<p>The wry-mouthed man wagged his head. “Creak, -creak! Once I saw fifty such in a lane, and the air was -black with birds! This one’s stood clean for a year.”</p> - -<p>It was like a letter against the sky. Joan stared at -it. Her lips parted. “I would cut it down and set -fire to it, and warm some beggar and her child.”</p> - -<p>Gervaise was looking about him. “The crossroads -are not far from here. He said—”</p> - -<p>“Stand still. There’s a horseman there.”</p> - -<p>Gervaise nodded his head and continued to move -forward. The horseman moved from the lane mouth -into the road. Even before Gervaise turned and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span> -beckoned, Aderhold saw who it was. “The man -with the hawk,” he said, and smiled.</p> - -<p>The man of the hawk and of the silver box dismounted, -threw the reins over his horse’s neck, and -stepped forward to meet them. Road and lane and -fields, the heap of rock amid fox-gloves where Aderhold -had sat one summer afternoon, the knoll -crowned by the gibbet—all lay bare of human life, -whitened by the moon.</p> - -<p>“Ha, philosopher!” said Sir Richard. “Places -called of ill omen are often just the other way -round! Well met again, under a harmless tree!” He -put out his hand.</p> - -<p>Aderhold clasped it. “Poor enough to say, ‘I -thank you, friend!’ And yet enough when it is the -very truth. I thank you, friend!”</p> - -<p>He spoke to Joan. “This is the man who opened -our prison doors.”</p> - -<p>She came and stood beside him. “I thank you, -sir. May you be through all time a friend to folk and -find them friends to you!”</p> - -<p>She stood tall and straight in man’s dress. She -had cut away the lengths of hair. A man’s cap -rested upon the short, thick locks. At first she made -no motion to remove this cap; instead, as she faced -Sir Richard, she made, involuntarily, the bend of -knee that formed a curtsy; then, as instantly, she -caught herself, recovered her height, and lifting her -hand doffed the cap, and stood with it held against -her breast.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span></p> - -<p>The man from the castle gave a genial laugh. -There was admiration in the sound. “Quick to -learn! A flexible free mind—and courage! Good -youth, I seem to remember you at the old huntsman’s -house.”</p> - -<p>“At times my father wrote for you, please you, -Sir Richard. And twice or thrice you came and sat -in the porch and talked with him and my uncle. -And once it was cherry time, and I brought you a -dish of cherries.”</p> - -<p>“I remember! And then you both went away.” -His kindly look dwelled upon her. “I watched you -through that five-days’ comedy in the Judgement -Hall yonder. I found it worth my mind’s while to -watch you; no less worth it than to watch this other -that they called servant of Evil! As for thanks, -it is yet to be seen if there is much reason.” He -spoke to them both. “I am putting you on the -road to the nearest port, and when you reach it -I can bring you to a ship there. But before you -reach it, you may be taken, and if you reach it and -enter the ship, I cannot answer for what will come to -you afterwards in life. I may be no friend at all.”</p> - -<p>“Friend, whatever comes,” said Aderhold. “If -we die to-morrow, friend on the other side of that.”</p> - -<p>“We’ll touch hands on that,” answered Sir -Richard. “And now, seeing that you must go on to -the crossroads, I will speak while we walk.”</p> - -<p>They put themselves into motion, five human -figures now upon the road, and the horse following<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span> -his master. The two escaped prisoners and their -helper moved ahead; behind them came Gervaise -and the gaoler, discoursing in whispers. The moon -shone down, the wind took a harp-like tone.</p> - -<p>“At the crossroads you four—Humphrey Lantern, -that was a good man-at-arms in the Low -Countries, and Gervaise, a born wanderer and a man -of mine between long flittings, and one Giles Allen, -a chirurgeon, and John his brother—will take the -road that runs to the port. If you reach it or reach it -not, one wiser than I may tell! Gervaise knows a -place where you may lie hidden to-morrow, going on -at nightfall. You may or may not save yourselves. -On the way thither I can give you but my wishes. -But when you come to the port,—if you come to -the port,—go at once to the harbour and find out -the Silver Queen.” He gave a packet wrapped in silk -to Aderhold. “Give the letter therein to the captain. -There is also a purse.—Nay, the thing must be -done rightly!”</p> - -<p>“The Silver Queen.”</p> - -<p>“The Silver Queen, sailing to Virginia. I have a -venture in her, and the captain owes me somewhat. -She carries a Virginia lading of adventurers and indentured -men.—In Virginia are forests and savage -men and wild beasts, but less preoccupation, maybe, -with Exclusive Salvation and the Guilt of Doubt—though -even in Virginia a still tongue were certainly -best!—To Virginia is the only help that I can give.”</p> - -<p>“I am content,” said Aderhold.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span></p> - -<p>The man of the hawk looked at Joan.</p> - -<p>“I am content,” she said.</p> - -<p>“Good!” said Sir Richard. “Humphrey Lantern -is all for adventure and a new world. But Gervaise, -when he has seen you safely shipped, will manage to -cross to Ireland and take service for a time with my -brother there. Next year I’m for France, and I look -to find Gervaise dropped like an acorn on the road -to Paris. But Lantern goes with you. What, good -Humphrey, is now your name?”</p> - -<p>The red-faced, wry-mouthed man scratched his -head. “I hadn’t thought, Your Honour.... George -is a good name—George Dragon, Sir Richard.”</p> - -<p>The little company fell silent, walking in the -moonlight upon a road bare as a sword.... Behind -Joan and Aderhold receded the old life, sunk away -the town, the road to Hawthorn and Hawthorn and -its church, the Oak Grange and Hawthorn Forest, -people a many, the two Carthews, Master Thomas -Clement, Alison, Cecily, other names, folk a many, -things done and suffered, old life. Before them -stretched something new, strange life, bare as yet -of feature as the road before them. Their imaginations -were not busy with it; they left it veiled, but -yet they felt its presence.... Undoubtedly, even at -this moment, even earlier than this moment, their -escape might be discovered. Already the hue and -cry might be raised. Even now the finders might be -on their track. They might be seized long ere they -could reach the port, or, having reached it, before<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span> -they could reach the Silver Queen. The Silver -Queen might be searched before it sailed. They -might be dragged back. The gallows and the stake -might be cheated no moment of their prey. They -might again see Hawthorn faces. They knew all -this, but their thought did not dwell upon it. Their -minds saw dimly something new, bare yet of feature.</p> - -<p>The man of the hawk walked musing beside Aderhold. -At last he spoke. “We are not far from the -crossroads. When we are there you will go your -ways and I shall turn and go back to the castle.... -If we grow by means of all circumstance as it flows -by and through us, how are you changed by what -has lately passed?”</p> - -<p>“This summer,” said Aderhold, “I grew somewhat -past bodily fear. I should like you to know that.”</p> - -<p>“I saw no great cowardice before.... How now -do you feel toward your fellow man?”</p> - -<p>“My fellow man is myself.”</p> - -<p>“And toward that which we call God?”</p> - -<p>“As I did.... I seek that which is high within me.”</p> - -<p>The other nodded. “I understand....” They -walked on in silence until they saw before them the -crossroads. Aderhold remembered the ragged trees, -the dyke-like bank, the stake through the heart of -the suicide. The night was wearing late. The moon -shone small and high. Charles’s Wain was under the -North Star. The five came to a stand, and here the -four said good-bye to the one.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER XXIII</h2> - -<p class="pch">THE ROAD TO THE PORT</p> - -<p class="pn1"><span class="smcap">Their</span> side of the earth turned, turned with ceaseless -motion toward the central orb. There grew a -sense of the threshold of dawn, of the chill and sunken -furthest hour, when the need was great for the -door of light to open. The road they were upon was -narrower, rougher, than the highway, with more hills -to climb. The four travelled as rapidly as was possible, -there being a goal to be reached before sunlight -and the world abroad. Gervaise and Lantern -swung on without overmuch effort, but the faces of -Joan and Aderhold were drawn and the beads stood -on their foreheads. Behind them were long prison, -scanty fare, bodily hurt, broken strength. Their -lips parted, their breath came gaspingly. They went -on from moment to moment, each step now a weariness, -all thought suspended, the whole being bent -only on endurance, on measuring the road that must -be measured. They did not speak, though now and -then one turned eyes to the other.</p> - -<p>Far off a cock crew and was answered by another. -Vaguely the air changed, the world paled, a -steely light came into the east. Gervaise looked at -the two. “We’ll rest here until there’s colour in -the sky. We’ve come pretty fast.” There was a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span> -great stone by the road. Aderhold and Joan sank -upon it, lay outstretched, still as in the last sleep. -He had a wide cloak, she had none. He raised -himself upon his hand and spread over her the half -of this. They lay with closed eyes, drinking rest.</p> - -<p>Far off and not so far, more cocks were crowing. -In the eastern sky the bars of grey turned purple, -then into them came a faint red. The birds were -cheeping in the tree-tops. The mist veil over field -and meadow grew visible. Gervaise and Lantern, -who had been seated with their knees drawn up, -arms upon knees and head upon arms, raised their -eyes, marked the red in the sky, and got to their feet. -Gervaise went and touched the two. “Time to go -on! We’ve got to get hidden before Curiosity’s had -breakfast.”</p> - -<p>They went on, the light strengthening, the air -warming, a myriad small sounds beginning. In less -than a mile they came to a branching road, rough -and narrow. Gervaise leading, they entered this, -followed it for some distance, and left it for a half-obliterated -cart track running through woods. -In turn they quitted the woods for a stubblefield, -plunged from this into a sunken lane, and so in the -early sunlight came before a small farmhouse, remote -and lonely, couched and hidden between -wooded hills. “My granther’s brother’s house,” -said Gervaise. “Stay you all here while I go spy out -the land.” They waited in the sunken lane, the blue -sky overhead. The wry-mouthed man busied himself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span> -with a torn shoe. Joan and Aderhold knelt in a -warm hollow of the bank, leaned against the good -earth.</p> - -<p>“<i>Giles and John Allen</i>,” he said. “Do not forget -the names.”</p> - -<p>“No.... When I speak to you, am I to say, -‘Giles’?”</p> - -<p>“Aye,—aye, John.”</p> - -<p>“Do you think they will not know that I am a -woman?”</p> - -<p>He looked at her critically for the first time. “You -have height and a right frame. Your voice is deeper -than most women’s. Now that your hair is cut, I -have seen youths with locks so worn and of that -colour and thickness. You are pale from prison and -unhappiness, but the sun will tan your cheeks. You -have mind and will, and all that you do you do with -a just art. Discovery may come, but it need not -come—”</p> - -<p>Gervaise reappeared. “It’s all right! The old -people will not blab, and their two daughters and -the ploughman have propitiously gone to a fair! -Now, Master Allen, and your brother, and good -George Dragon—” They moved toward the house. -Gervaise jerked his thumb toward a barn that -showed beyond. “Good straw—good, warm, dusk -corner to lie <i>perdu</i> in, back of the eaves! I’ll bring -food, bread and milk. So you’ll have your rest to-day, -and to-night we’ll cover as many miles as may -be.—This way! We’ll not go through the house.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span> -Say we’re taken, I’d rather not drag the good folk -in more than ankle-deep.”</p> - -<p>The barn was dim and wholesome-smelling. The -piled straw in the loft felt good beneath aching -frames. They made with bundles of it a chance-seeming -barrier, behind which in a fragrant hollow -they prepared to rest. Close overhead was the -brown roof that, beyond their niche, sloped steeply -upward a great distance. A square had been cut for -light and air; through it poured vagrant, scented -breezes, and in and out flew the swallows. The light -was thick and brown; it would take keen eyes to see -aught but straw, rudely heaped. Gervaise brought a -basket filled with homely, country fare, and then a -great jug of spring water. They ate and drank, and -then set watches—one to watch while the others -slept. Humphrey Lantern took the first.</p> - -<p>Rest was sweet, sleep was sweet.... Joan woke -sometime in the early afternoon. There in a hollow of -his own sat Gervaise, succeeded to Lantern’s watch. -He sat, blue-eyed and meditative, chewing a straw. -Lantern sprawled at a little distance, in sleep back, -perhaps, in the old wars. Nearer lay Aderhold, his -arm thrown across his eyes, profoundly sleeping. At -first Joan was bewildered and did not know where -she was; then the whole surged back. She lay quite -still, and memory painted for her picture after -picture.</p> - -<p>Presently Gervaise, glancing her way, saw that her -eyes were open. He nodded to her and crept over<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span> -the straw until they were close neighbours, when he -seated himself Turk fashion and asked if she had -slept.</p> - -<p>She laughed. “Unless I was dead, I was asleep.”</p> - -<p>“He has not moved. Prison life’s a hard life, and -then I understand that before that he was up day -and night with the plague.... Well, and what do -you think of the wide world before you?”</p> - -<p>“Is it so wide?”</p> - -<p>“That’s as you take it. It’s as wide as your vision, -your taste, and your hearing.”</p> - -<p>“I do not wish to be hanged.... It used to come -and gather round me when I slept, there in the dungeon, -in the prison. First the place grew large, and -then it filled with people,—I could feel them in the -dark,—and then I knew where the gallows was, -and hands that burned me and bruised me put a -rope around my neck, and in the dark the people -began to laugh and curse. And then I woke up, and -my hands and arms were cold and wet, and I said, -‘So it will be, and so the rope will feel, and so they -will laugh!’... Over and over.... But it did not -come to me here, though I was asleep. I do not believe -that they will take us now.”</p> - -<p>“Do you believe in witches and black men and -Satan and his country?”</p> - -<p>“I used to. Isn’t every little child taught it? It’s -hard to rub out what they taught you when you -were a child. But do I believe it now?” She -laughed with a bitter mirth. “My oath, on anything<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span> -you please, that I do not believe it now! I believe -that some folk have more good than bad in them, -and a few have far more good than bad. And that -some folk have more bad than good in them, and a -few have far more bad than good. And that most -folk are pretty evenly mixed, and that now one having -walks forth and now another. But that we are -all folk.”</p> - -<p>“That presents well enough,” said Gervaise, “my -manner of thinking. But then I have lived long -with Sir Richard.”</p> - -<p>They fell silent. A bird flew in at the window. -The pleasant, drowsy scent of the hay was about -them, the sun-shot dusk, the murmur of the wind -across the opening. “Is your watch nearly over,” -asked Joan, “and were you going to wake him next? -I am awake already, so give it to me.”</p> - -<p>“Nay, nay,” said Gervaise; “neither to you nor to -him! I’ll sit here for another two hours and think of -the flowers I might have grown. Then Lantern will -take it again. You two are to get your rest.—I like -well enough to converse with you, but my advice is -to shut your eyes and go back to sleep.”</p> - -<p>Joan smiled at him and obeyed. She shut her grey -eyes, and in two minutes was back at the fountain -of rest for overwrought folk. She slept, slept, and -Aderhold slept. When they waked the sun was -hanging low in the west. They waked at a touch -from Gervaise. “Best all of us open our eyes and -pull our senses together! I hear the two daughters<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span> -and the ploughman, and maybe company with -them, coming back from the fair.”</p> - -<p>There were heard, indeed, from the lane, not far -away, voices talking freely and all together. Lantern -crept to the window and with care looked forth. -He came back. “Country folk—five or six, and -merry from the fair.” The voices reached the farmhouse, -entered it, and became muffled. The sun -dropped behind the hills.</p> - -<p>Twilight was not far advanced when there -sounded a footstep in the barn below the hayloft. -The four, still before, now lay hardly breathing.</p> - -<p>The footstep approached the loft, halted beside -the ladder that led up. “Gervaise” said a quavering, -anxious voice. “Granther’s brother,” murmured -Gervaise, and crept cautiously to the edge of -the loft. Presently he disappeared down the ladder, -and the three, crouched where the roof was lowest, -heard a muted colloquy below. The farmer’s voice -sounded alarmed and querulous, Gervaise’s soothing. -At last they ceased to talk, and the old man’s slow -and discontented step was heard to leave the barn. -Gervaise came up the ladder and crawled over the -straw to the escaped prisoners and runaway gaoler. -The loft was now in darkness, only the square window -glimmered yet, framing a sky from which the -gold had not quite faded.</p> - -<p>“It’s boot and saddle, sound horn and away!” he -said in a sober whisper. “We had not been gone two -hours when some officious fool must seek the heart’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span> -ease of Lantern’s company! No Lantern to be found—all -dark! No new turnkey to be found either. -Whereupon they waken an authority, and he’s -inspired to open dungeon doors and look within! -Hue and cry! Town first, but with the morning light -men a-horseback on all roads.—They had it all at -the fair—brought it all home. County’s afire to -bring the wild beasts back. Country for as many -miles as necessary will be scoured clean as a prize -pannikin. Reward for capture, living or dead;—bands -out to earn it. All manner penalties for any -who harbour. The goodman here put two and two -together,—matched four with four,—and at the -first chance, while they’re all at supper, comes shivering -out to warn us off. Granther’s brother’ll not -tell, but travel it is!—Humphrey Lantern, you take -the basket with what food’s left. We’ll need it. -Toss the straw together so ’twill not show the lair. -We’ll just wait till that last light goes.”</p> - -<p>They waited, felt their way to the ladder and -down it, then out of the barn. Voices were noisy in -the house a stone’s throw away. A woman came to -the open door and stood looking out. When she had -turned away, they entered the lane and followed it -until it set them in the wood track they had left in -the morning. Here they paused to consider their -course. In that direction so many miles, as the crow -flew, lay the port. Return to the road they had -left at dawn, strive to keep upon it at least through -the night, and so make certainly the greatest speed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span> -toward their goal? Night-time, and ordinarily there -would be none or little travel through the night, and -that little easily hidden from. But to-night the road -might be most perilous; harrow and rake might be -dragging along it. Nevertheless they decided for the -road.</p> - -<p>It was now utterly dark. They saw nothing, -heard nothing, but the small continuous voice of the -hot, dry night. They were rested; to Joan and Aderhold -especially there seemed to have come anew -youth and strength. They walked steadily, with a -swinging step, and the country fell behind them and -the sea grew nearer. They spoke only at long intervals -and then in whispers.</p> - -<p>“Luck’s with us,” offered Gervaise. “I’d almost -rather see it more chequered! Very Smooth always -has a mocking look in her eyes.”</p> - -<p>Lantern growled in his throat. “I haven’t had -much smooth in <i>my</i> life. It owes me a little smooth.”</p> - -<p>The moon rose. It showed them on either hand a -rolling country, and before them a village. The road -ran through this; therefore, for the time being, they -would leave the road. They crept through a hedge -and found themselves in a rough and broken field. -Crossing this they pierced a small wood and dipped -down to a stream murmuring past a mill. The great -wheel rose before them, the moon making pearls of -the dripping water. The stream had a footbridge. -They hesitated, but all was dark and silent. They -crossed, and as they stepped upon the beaten earth<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span> -on the farther side, two dogs sprang upon them from -the shadow of the mill. They came barking furiously—the -refugees snatched what stick or stone they -could reach and beat them back. One was cowardly -and stood off and barked, but the other, a great -black beast, sprang upon the first in his path. It -chanced to be Joan. She caught him by his own -throat before he could reach hers, but he was fierce -and strong and tore from her grasp. His teeth met -in the cloth of her jerkin, he dragged her to the -ground. Aderhold’s hands were at his throat, choking -his jaws open, pushing him backward. Over the -physician’s bent shoulder Lantern’s arm rose and -fell, the moon making the dagger gleam. The dog -loosened his grip, howled, and gave back with a -slashed and bleeding muzzle.</p> - -<p>Out of a hut, built beside the mill, came a man’s -voice, roughly threatening. “Who’s there? Who’s -there? Ill-meaning folk take warning!”</p> - -<p>As they did not answer, the owner of the voice -burst from the hut and came toward them, shouting -to the dogs to hold fast and swinging a great thorn -stick. The moon showed a half-dressed, stout rustic, -bold enough but dull of wit, and still heavy, -besides, with sleep. Behind him came a half-grown -boy.</p> - -<p>“Call off your dogs!” cried Gervaise. “We are -seamen ashore, making from the port to the town of -——. They told us there was a village hereabouts, -and we kept on walking after night, thinking to come<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span> -to it. But we think it’s bewitched and walks as we -walk. Call your dogs off! We’re harmless men, used -to the sea and crossing a strange country. Put us -right, friend, and thank you kindly!”</p> - -<p>“What have you done to Holdfast? He’s frighted -and bleeding.”</p> - -<p>“He pulled one of us down and nothing else -served to make him loosen grip. ’Twill heal and no -harm done!”</p> - -<p>But a controversy gathered in the eyes of the miller’s -man. “That dog’s worth all the ’gyptians and -vagrants and seamen between here and London -town! If you think you’re going round murdering -dogs—”</p> - -<p>“I think,” said Gervaise, “that I’ve in my pouch -a crown piece which I got of a gentleman for a parrokeet -and an Indian pipe. Let’s see if ’t won’t salve -that muzzle.” He drew it forth and turned it to and -fro in the moonlight. “Ask the dog. Hark’ee! He -says, ‘Take it, and let harmless sailor folk pass!’” -He slid it into the peasant’s hand, who stood looking -down upon it with a dawning grin. “Cross this -bridge,” asked Gervaise, “and we’ll be in the path -to the village?”</p> - -<p>“Aye, aye,” answered the fellow. “If you be -harmful folk, let them find it out there!—Be you -sure this piece is good? You ben’t coiners or -passers?”</p> - -<p>“We ben’t,” said Gervaise. “The piece is as good -as the new breeches it will buy.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span></p> - -<p>They recrossed the bridge, stepping from it into -the wood already traversed. The boy’s shrill voice -came to them from across the stream. “Father, -father! They’re four, and ’twas four the man told -us broke gaol! They ben’t sailors—they be the -witches!” His voice took a bewildered tone. “Only -one of them was a woman—and they’re going toward -the town—”</p> - -<p>“What I be going to do,” answered the man, “is to -go up t’ the house and waken miller—”</p> - -<p>The dogs were still barking. The boy’s voice -rose shriller and shriller. “I know they’re witches! -They had glowing eyes and they were taller than -people—”</p> - -<p>The four plunged more deeply into the wood. The -confused sound died behind them. They went up -the stream a mile, came upon a track that ran down -to stepping-stones, crossed the water for the second -time, and once more faced seaward; then after a -time turned at right angles and so struck the road -again, the village well passed. But the détour had -cost them heavily in time. Moreover, even in the -night-time, there grew a feeling of folk aware, of -movement, a fear of eyes, of a sudden shout of arrest.... -They heard behind them a trampling of horses’ -hoofs, together with voices. There was just time to -break into a friendly thicket by the roadside, and -crouch there among the hazel stems, out of the -moonlight. There came by a party of men, some -a-horseback, some on foot.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Four,” said one distinctly.</p> - -<p>“Shall we beat that thicket?”</p> - -<p>“They couldn’t have gotten this far.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll ride through it to make sure—”</p> - -<p>Man and horse came into the thicket. They -passed within ten feet of the four lying flat, but -touched them not and saw them not.... When all -were gone the sorcerer and the witch and their companions -came forth and again pressed seaward. The -dawn appeared, the sky unearthly cold and remote -behind the clean black line of the earth. It showed -a homeless country for them. With the first grey -gleam there began a traffic upon the road. They -were passed in the dimness by a pedlar with his -pack, a drover with sheep. They saw coming a -string of carts, and they left the road again, this -time for good. They lay now amid heather upon a -moor, and in the pale, uncertain light considered -their course. The miles were not many now before -them, but they were dangerous miles. They decided -at last to break company and, two and two, to strive -for the port. Say that, so they arrived there, then -would they come as well to an inner ring of dangers.... -But they all strove for cheer, or grim or bright, -and Gervaise appointed for rendezvous an obscure -small inn called The Moon, down by the harbour’s -edge. It was kept by a man known to Sir Richard. -Get to The Moon, whisper a word or two which -Gervaise now furnished, and the rest would probably -go well. The problem was to get there.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span></p> - -<p>It was also to decide, if they divided, who would -go with whom. Gervaise looked at Aderhold. “Will -you, sir, take Humphrey Lantern, and Joan go with -me?” There was a silence, then Aderhold spoke, -“You have proved yourself the best of guides and -guards. But life has taught me, too, to watch for -dangers and in some measure has given me skill. -And she and I are the heinous ones and the desperate.” -He turned his eyes to Joan. “Shall we not -keep together?”</p> - -<p>She nodded. “Very good.... The sky is growing -red.”</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER XXIV</h2> - -<p class="pch">THE FARTHER ROAD</p> - -<p class="pn1"><span class="smcap">What</span> were Gervaise’s and Lantern’s adventures -they would hear when they reached The Moon. -Their own, throughout this day, led them to no -harm. They had been for long in the hand of Ill -Fortune; it seemed now that she slept and her grasp -relaxed. The first outward happening came quickly, -ere the sun was an hour high. They were crossing -a heath-like, shelterless expanse, when a sudden -<i>Hilloa!</i> halted them. Two men were rapidly approaching -over the heath.</p> - -<p>“If we can, we will evade them,” said Aderhold. -“If we cannot and they would keep us by force—?”</p> - -<p>“They are not wrestlers nor giants,” answered -Joan. “If they have no weapon, mayhap we can -give them as good as they send—”</p> - -<p>The two ran up, looked at them suspiciously. -“What do you here? Who are you?”</p> - -<p>“Nay, who are <i>you</i>?” said Aderhold. “We are -lookers for a reward.”</p> - -<p>The opposing pairs stood and eyed each other. -The newcomers were two lank and unhealthy-looking, -plainly dressed, town-appearing young men.</p> - -<p>“Fie!” said one. “We also search, but not for love<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span> -of lucre and silver pounds in purses! We would -serve God by stamping his foes into dust!”</p> - -<p>“Which way have you looked?”</p> - -<p>The more garrulous of the two swept his arm -around. “Unless the Prince of the Power of the Air -hath held them invisible to the eyes of the Elect, -they are not in that direction nor in that! My -companion, Only Truth Turner, and I were about -to seek in the quarter to which I see you are addressed. -Let us, then, seek for a while in company. -And what, friends, may be your names?”</p> - -<p>“I am Relative Truth Allen, otherwise known as -Giles Allen, and this is my brother, Be-ye-kind-to-one-Another.—Four -together, is it not so? Three -fierce, foreign-looking men, and a short, dark woman.”</p> - -<p>“We didn’t,” said Only Truth, “hear them described. -But there will assuredly be some devil’s -mark whereby to know them.”</p> - -<p>They were now moving together over the heath. -Each of the four had a stout stick, broken at some -time in their several journeyings. With theirs the -two townsmen now and again beat some clump of -furze or thorn. Once a hare rushed forth and away, -and once a lark spread its wings and soaring vanished -into the blue. “Do you think,” said the -speaker, whose name was Wrath Diverted, “do you -think that that hare and bird might have been—? -I understand that in the trial the Hawthorn witches -all avowed that they became bird or beast at will.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span></p> - -<p>Aderhold followed the lark with his eyes. “I have -seen human beings who reminded me of bird or -beast, and I have seen bird and beast who reminded -me of human beings. If that one up yonder is a -witch, she hath strength of wing!”</p> - -<p>The lark disappeared; the hare came not back. -“Even so,” said Only Truth, “there would be two -left. But I hold that those were natural creatures.”</p> - -<p>They walked through the bright morning, over -the high bare world. “We came out,” said Wrath -Diverted, “to see my brother Another-Pays-my-Debt -who dwells at Win-Grace Farm. Yesterday -came news of the loosing of Beelzebub. Whereupon -many made themselves into bands and went forth -even as hunters, and at dawn this morning Only -Truth and I also.”</p> - -<p>“Let us keep our faces seaward,” said Aderhold. -“You have looked that way and we have looked -this.”</p> - -<p>“Good,” answered Wrath Diverted; “but we -should examine that dip in the earth I see yonder.”</p> - -<p>They searched the hollow and found naught to the -purpose, which done, they went briskly on, but kept -a constant watch to right and left. “This heath,” -said Wrath Diverted, “will presently fall to tilled -lands with roads and dwellings, byways and hedges. -Then there will be places to search, but here there is -naught—Were you at the trial of the troublers of -Israel?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span></p> - -<p>He spoke to Joan. “No,” she answered. “We -heard of it. Everybody heard of it.”</p> - -<p>“For my part,” said Only Truth, “I cannot conceive -how a man when he hath choice of masters -should choose so scurvy an one! Here is a King -whom you may serve who, if in this world He -seemeth at times neglectful of his servants and niggardly -in comforts and rewards, yet, when you have -come to the next world which is his true city and -court, you have his sign manual for it that you will -have honours and titles and riches without end! -Moreover, your body will be happy and comforted, -and you will not again be sorrowful or tried, nor ever -have to work, but only stand and praise.—Not so -with that other man, who will not kneel here nor -wear this Master’s livery! Comes King Satan and -claps him, ‘You are mine!’ Then mayhap he is led -to a dance of unlawful and honey-sweet pleasures, or -is given a heap of gold, or is dressed in a purple -mantle and given a sceptre to hold, or is made drunk -with worthless knowledge! But it is all a show and -turneth to gall and wormwood. For incontinent he -dieth. Nay, oftenest there is not in his hire the -honey-sweet nor the gold and purple! For the other -King’s servant even here triumpheth, and Satan’s -man dieth a lazar and poor, even if he be not hanged, -torn asunder, broken on the wheel, or burned. Then -goeth the wicked wretch to his Master’s capital and -court, even as the good man goeth to his. But the -one servant lifteth his feet in haste from burning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span> -marl and findeth no cool floor to set them on. He -swalloweth smoke and flames and findeth no water -in all hell. His flesh blackeneth to a crisp, but is -never burned senseless. A million years pass, and -not one second but he hath felt first pain and terror. -Eternity, eternity! and never will his anguish lessen. -He looketh about him and seeth those for whom he -had affection—for like liketh like—burning with -him, and about their feet, creeping and wailing, the -unbaptized babes. He looketh up, and he seeth -across the gulf the other King’s court, and the -Happy Servant. And the Happy Servant looketh -down and seeth him, and his own bliss waxeth great. -Wherefore—”</p> - -<p>Wrath Diverted took the word. “Nay! You err, -Brother Only Truth, in using the word ‘choice.’ -There is no choice, none!—that is, none on our -part. Attribute no merit to us who attain Salvation! -Attain it, do I say? Nay, we attain it not, -we are <i>lifted</i> into it. Another pays my debt!”</p> - -<p>“Nay, I meant it in that wise,” said Only Truth. -“A babe in the faith knoweth that all are rightly -lost and damned. Lost, lost! all are lost. Five thousand -and more years ago it happened! One day, nay, -one hour, one minute—and all was done and over! -Then all souls sank to hell, and all put on Satan’s -livery. In hell are folk who have burned and howled -five thousand years! Lost, lost, all are lost! But the -King, because of the Prince’s intercession, holds out -his sceptre to those among us whom he chooses out.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span> -But we have no goodness or merit of our own! Miserable -sinners are we all, and the due of perdition!”</p> - -<p>“Precisely so,” said Wrath Diverted. “In -Adam’s fall, we sinned all. Wherefore they in hell, -whether they be pagan or heathen or ignorant or -babes, have no reason to complain. But while all -are guilty there be some who have added rebellion to -rebellion, and sewed the web of disobedience with -the needle of blasphemy! They be those who refuse -to worship! They be those who will not admire the -Plan of Salvation!”</p> - -<p>“Aye,” said Only Truth. “Apostates, Sadducees, -atheists, miscreants, infidels, unbelievers, witches, -warlocks, wizards, magicians, and sorcerers! -Damned and lost! They howl in the hottest cauldron -and burn in a furnace seven times heated!”</p> - -<p>So discoursing they came insensibly into a strip of -country, green and pleasant with late summer. Before -them was a hillside with a parcel of children at -play, a dozen or more, and among them a big boy or -two. These now gathered into a knot and stared -down at the pedestrians. “Four—coming across -Blackman’s Heath!”</p> - -<p>There arose a buzzing sound, half from fright, half -from a sense of exciting adventure. One bolder -than his fellows called down. “Be you the witches?”</p> - -<p>“Witches!—witches—!”</p> - -<p>“They be all men—”</p> - -<p>“Ho! Satan could make them all seem men! -They pray to Satan and he lets them turn what they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span> -will. Bats and red mice and ravens and horses—”</p> - -<p>“So he could! Witches!”</p> - -<p>“They be four, and they come running over -Blackman’s Heath—”</p> - -<p>A stone leaped down the hillside. Another followed, -and struck Only Truth, who grew red and -angry and brandished his stick. The assailants -shouted, half in fear, half in glee, and gave somewhat -back; then seeing that they were safe, well above the -assailed and with the open hill behind them, stopped -and threw more stones. Only Truth would have -made after them, up the hillside, but Aderhold -checked him. “Do not fight bees and children—”</p> - -<p>They were presently out of stoneshot. But the -children might carry news and set others on their -path. “Those escaped are four,” said Aderhold to -Wrath Diverted, “and we are four. It will not be -convenient to be stopped and questioned on that -ground.”</p> - -<p>“I believe that you are right,” answered Wrath -Diverted. “Moreover, you and your brother are -evidently country-bred, and walk more swiftly than -is comfortable for us who dwell in towns. Let us -part, therefore in amity. I see yonder a road which -should furnish easier walking than this growth and -unevenness beneath our feet.”</p> - -<p>“Then,” said Aderhold, “we, being as you say, -country-bred, will keep on seaward over these fields -and downs.”</p> - -<p>An hour later the two lay in a pit dug long since<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span> -for some purpose and now half filled with old dead -brush, while a formidable chase went by. These -were mounted men, officers of the law, armed -with an accurate description, among them, indeed, a -sheriff’s man who knew the escaped by sight. They -came trampling by; they looked down into the pit as -they passed, and thought they saw true bottom and -naught there but a litter of dead leaves and twigs; -they checked their horses not many yards from the -opening and stood conferring. Their voices came -down in an indistinguishable hoarse murmur like the -sea against the strand. They shook their bridles and -rode away.... The two, who had lain half-stifled, -covered by the bed of brush, stirred, heaved the -stuff away, rose gasping to their knees. Silence and -the blue sky. They crouched, eye above the rim of -the pit, until sight gave reassurance, then climbed -forth and brushed from each other dead leaf and -ancient dust.</p> - -<p>“That was like a grave,” said Joan.</p> - -<p>Aderhold stood gazing, his hand above his eyes. -“Far off yonder—that is ocean.”</p> - -<p>“Where?”</p> - -<p>They stood in silence. About them was sunny -stillness; far off lay the sapphire streak. Tension—action—the -mind held to an arduous matter in -hand—in the moments between, exhaustion, concern -only with rest—so had passed the time since -they had crept from the gaol into the black gaol -alley. Now suddenly there came a sense of relaxation,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span> -then of poise, then of time before them. Years—there -might be years.... Even that set amount -and partition dissolved like a mist. They were -going to be together, and their minds placed no -term.</p> - -<p>They were, the two of them, sincere and powerful -natures. Now they ceased to look at the ocean which -their bodies would sail, and turned and met each -other’s eyes.... Another division melted from between -them. He had been to her a learned man, of -a station higher than her own. She had said “Sir,” -and “Master Aderhold.” He was still, through circumstance, -more learned than she, with a wider -range of knowledge and suffering, with a subtler -command of peace and mind’s joy. But she had -power to learn and to suffer and to weave joy; there -was no natural inequality. The other inequality, the -unevenness in station, now melted into air. Given -substance only by long convention, it now faded -like a dream and left a man and woman moulded of -one stuff, peers, unity in twain.</p> - -<p>“The ocean!” said Joan: “to sail upon the ocean! -What things happen that once you thought were -dreams!”</p> - -<p>“Aye,” said Aderhold. “Long to the height—imagine -to the height—build in the ether....”</p> - -<p>They moved toward the sea. The country was not -populous. Avoiding as they did all beaten ways, -taking cover where they might of wood or hillside, -they seemed to have come into a realm of security.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span> -They were faint with hunger. Before them rose a -solitary cottage bowered in trees. After weighing it -this way and that, they went forward soft-footed, -and peered from behind a stout hedge of thorn. A -blue feather curled from the chimney, the door -stood open, and on a sunny-space of grass three -young women were spreading linen to bleach. They -hummed and chattered as they worked; they were -rosy and comely, and looked kind.</p> - -<p>Aderhold spoke with his hands on the top of the -gate. “Maidens, will you give two hungry folk a -bite and a sup? We can pay a penny for it.”</p> - -<p>The three looked up and stood in doubt; then one -ran to the cottage door. An elderly woman, tall and -comely, appeared, hearkened to her daughter, then -stepped across the bit of green to the gate. “Be you -vagrants and masterless men?”</p> - -<p>“No,” answered Aderhold. “We are honest folk -seeking work, which we look to find in the port. -We are not far from it, good mistress?”</p> - -<p>“Less than three miles by the path, the lane, and -the road,” said the woman. “You can see the roofs -and towers and, if you listen, hear the church bells.”</p> - -<p>They were, indeed, ringing, a faint, silver sound. -Aderhold listened; then, “We are very hungry. If -we might buy a loaf of you we would eat it as we -walked—”</p> - -<p>“Nay, I’ll give you bread,” said the woman. “I -or mine might be hungry, too, sometime—and -what odds if we never were!” She spoke to one of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span> -the three standing amid the bleaching linen. “Alice! -get the new-baked loaf—”</p> - -<p>Alice turned toward the cottage. The two others -came nearer to the gate. The church bells were still -ringing, fine and far and faint. They seemed to bring -something to the woman’s mind. “They say they’ve -taken the Hawthorn folk who ran from prison.”</p> - -<p>“Where—”</p> - -<p>“Two men came by and told us. A miller and his -men and dogs took them last night. They fought -with fire and Satan was seen above the mill-wheel. -But they took them all, the two men said, and gave -them to the nearest constable, and so now the countryside -can rest.” She stood with her capable air of -strength and good nature, looking over the green -earth to the distant town. “There must be witches -because God wrote the Bible and it cannot be mistaken. -Otherwise, of course, there are a lot of things.... I -used to know Hawthorn when I was a girl. -And Roger Heron. More years than one I danced -with him about the maypole—for then we had -maypoles.”</p> - -<p>“Roger Heron!” It was Joan who spoke.</p> - -<p>“Aye. I was thinking.... He’s dead of the -plague. And his daughter’s Joan Heron, the main -witch. Life’s a strange thing.”</p> - -<p>Her daughter brought the loaf of bread and also a -pitcher of milk and two earthenware cups. The -other girls left the white, strewn linen and drew near. -The cottage was a lonely one, and few passed, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span> -by nature all were kind-hearted and social. Alice -gave a cup to each of the wanderers, and then, tilting -the pitcher, filled the cups with milk. Giles and John -Allen thanked her and, hungry and thirsty to exhaustion, -drank and were refreshed.</p> - -<p>But Joan, when she had put down the cup, moved -nearer to the mother of the three. “Did you ever -see—the witch?”</p> - -<p>The woman, who had been listening to the church -bells, turned her strong and kindly face. “Roger -Heron brought her here once when she was a child. -There was no ill in her then—or I saw it not. Roger -Heron should not have had an evil child. There was -little evil in him.”</p> - -<p>The middle daughter was more prim of countenance -than the others. She now put on a shocked -look. “But, mother! That is to deny Original Sin -and Universal Guilt!”</p> - -<p>The elder woman made a gesture with her hand. -It had in it a slight impatience. “I do not mean,” -she said, “that we haven’t all of everything in us. -But Roger Heron was a good man.”</p> - -<p>“Ah!” said the youngest daughter, “how any one -can be a witch and hurt and harm, and be lost for -aye, and leave a vile name—”</p> - -<p>“Aye,” said the second; “to know that your -name was Joan Heron, and that it would be a byword -for a hundred years!”</p> - -<p>“I am glad that Roger Heron died of the plague -and waited not for a broken heart,” said the mother,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span> -and took the pitcher from the grass. “How far have -you walked to-day?”</p> - -<p>Aderhold answered. Presently, the loaf of bread in -hand, he said that they must go on if they would reach -the port before night, and that they gave warm -thanks for kindness.... They left the friendly cottage -with the sunny spread of grass and the bleaching -linen and the kindly women. A dip of the land, -a turn of the path, and all vanished as if they had -sunk into earth. Before them, fraying the horizon, -they saw the distant town.</p> - -<p>Aderhold spoke. “You were there when you were -a child. Do you remember it?”</p> - -<p>She answered. “I remembered at last—not at -first: not plainly. I remember the sea.”</p> - -<p>Her voice was broken. He looked and saw that -she was weeping.</p> - -<p>He had not seen her so since the last time he had -come to Heron’s cottage, and she had wept for her -father’s death. There had been no weeping in prison, -nor in that Judgement Hall, nor since. He knew without -telling that though she felt grief, she controlled -grief. But now, startled by a tide she had not looked -for, control was beaten down. All about them was a -solitariness, a green and silent, sunny world. She -struggled for a moment, then with a gesture of wild -sorrow, sank upon a wayside rise of earth and hid her -face. “Weep it out,” said Aderhold in a shaken -voice; “it will do you good.”</p> - -<p>He stood near her, but did not watch her or touch<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</a></span> -her. Instead he broke the loaf of bread into portions -and kept a lookout north and south and east -and west. No human being came into range of vision. -The slow minutes went by, then came Joan’s -voice, broken yet, but steadying with every word. -“All that is over now—I’ll not do that again.”</p> - -<p>She came up to him and took a piece of the bread. -“Let us go on. We can eat it as we go.”</p> - -<p>They walked on.</p> - -<p>“It was Gervaise and Lantern,” said Aderhold, -“who told her that tale of a capture at the mill. -They are ahead.... I have seen brave men and -women, but I have seen none braver than you, -Joan.... Life is very great. There are in it threads -of all colours and every tone that is, and if happiness -is not stable, neither is misery. You are brave—be -brave enough to be happy!”</p> - -<p>The sun declined, the town ahead grew larger -against a soft and vivid sky. Now they could see the -harbour and that there were ships at anchor. They -now met, overtook, or were passed by people. Some -spoke, some went on preoccupied, but none stopped -and questioned them. They entered the town by a -travelled way, slipping in with a crowd of carts and -hucksters. Within, and standing for a moment looking -back, they saw coming with dust and jingling the -party that had passed them lying in the pit.</p> - -<p>They turned, struck into a narrow way that led -downward to the sea, and came upon the waterside -in the red sunset light. A fishwife crossed their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</a></span> -path. “The Moon Tavern? Yonder, beyond the -nets.” They came to it in the dusk, its sign a great, -full moon with a man, a dog, and a thornbush on -the golden ground. As it loomed before them, Gervaise -stepped from the shadow of a heap of timber. -“Greeting, Giles and John! George Dragon and I -have been here this hour.—And yonder lies the -Silver Queen.”</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER XXV</h2> - -<p class="pch">THE SILVER QUEEN</p> - -<p class="pn1"><span class="smcap">The Silver Queen</span>, a ship neither great nor small, -high-pooped, white-sailed, her figurehead a crowned -woman, her name good for seaworthiness, ploughed -the green water. Her sailors and the adventurers for -new lands whom she carried watched their own island -sink from view, watched the European coast, -saw it also fade, saw only the boundless, restless -main. The ship drove south, for the Indies’ passage.</p> - -<p>Mariners and all, she carried a hundred and -sixty souls. Captain Hugh Bard was the captain—a -doughty son of the sea. Her sailors were fair -average, tough of body, in mind some brutal, some -weak, some good and true men. She was carrying -colonists and adventurers to the New World, accessions -to the lately established settlement at Jamestown. -Among these men were sober-minded Englishmen, -reputable and not ill-to-do, men who had -warred or traded with credit in various parts of the -world, who had perhaps joined in earlier ventures to -American shores. These carried with them labourers, -indentured servants, perhaps a penniless kinsman -or two, discontented at home. The mass of -those upon the Silver Queen were followers and indentured<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</a></span> -men. But there were likewise adventurers -going singly, free lances, with enough or just enough -to pay passage, men all for change and roving, or -dare-devil men, or men with wild fancies, hopes, -ambitions, intents, or men merely leaving worst -things for a conjectural better. Also there were a -few who thought to practise their professions in the -new settlement, a barber and perfumer, a musician, -a teacher, a lawyer, and a divine. It was an average -swarm from old England, in the early years of colonization.</p> - -<p>Aboard was but one woman, and she was not -known as a woman. She was called John Allen, and -went as the still-mouthed and loneliness-loving -brother of the chirurgeon Giles Allen. In the first -days the latter had stated to a group, from which -John Allen had risen and gone away, that his brother -was but now recovering from a melancholy brought -about by the death of one whom he had loved. Now -those aboard were not beasts, but men with, in the -main, answering hearts to lovers’ joys and woes. -For the most part not over-observant or critical, and -with their own matters much in mind, they took the -statement as it was given them and allowed to John -Allen silence and solitude—such silence and solitude -as were obtainable. Silence and solitude were all -around upon the great sea, but the ship was a hive -adrift.</p> - -<p>Captain Hugh Bard was under obligations to Sir -Richard. Clients of Sir Richard—nothing known<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</a></span> -but that they were folk whom that knight was willing -to help from England—were sure of his blunt -good offices. Moreover, the ship’s doctor fell ill, -whereupon Giles Allen offered his services, there -being much sickness among the colonists. The captain -nodded, found that he had aboard a skilled -physician, and took a liking to the man himself. -Aderhold asked no favours for himself, and none -that might arouse suspicion for her who passed as -his brother. But yet, with a refinement of skill, he -managed to obtain for her what she wanted in that -throng of men—a little space, a little distance.</p> - -<p>She never added difficulty to their situation. She -was no fine lady. She was yeoman born and bred, -courageous and sane. It was yet the evening glow of -the strong Elizabethan age. Men and women were -more frank and free in one another’s company than -grew to be the case in a later period. The wife or -mistress, sometimes the sister, in the dress of page or -squire, fellow traveller, attendant at court, sometimes -fellow soldier, made a commonplace of the -age’s stage-play or romantic tale. If the masquerade -occurred oftener in poem or play than in fact, yet -in the last-named, too, it occurred.</p> - -<p>Joan had native wit. Her being, simple-seeming, -pushed forward complexes enough when it came to -the touch. Aderhold marvelled to see her so skilful -and wary, and still so quiet with it all that she -seemed to act without motion, or with motion too -swift for perception. She went unsuspected of all—a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[330]</a></span> -tall, fair youth with grey eyes and a manner of -reserve, brooding aside over some loss of his own.</p> - -<p>Giles Allen, John Allen, George Dragon—it was -George Dragon, Aderhold came to see, who furnished -the danger point.—Humphrey Lantern was -no artist to put forward a self complete, yet not -your home and most familiar self. He had no considerable -rôle to play; he was merely George Dragon, -an old soldier of the Dutch Wars, who since had -knocked about as best he might, and now would try -his fortune in Virginia. He was at liberty to talk of -the good wars and the Low Countries all he wished. -He sought the forecastle and the company of the -ruder sort and he talked of these. But he was forgetful, -and at times the near past would trip up the far -past. Never the very near past, but Aderhold had -heard him let slip that for part time since the good -wars, he had served as a gaoler—“head man in a -good prison,” he put it with a grim touch of pride. -Aderhold thought that some one had given him -usquebaugh to drink. When he cautioned him, as he -earnestly did at the first chance, Lantern could not -remember that he had said any such thing, but, -being sober, he agreed that the least thing might be -spark to gunpowder, and that their lives depended -upon discretion. He promised and for some time -Aderhold observed him exercising due caution. But -the fear remained, and the knowledge that Lantern -would drink if tempted, and drunken knew not what -he said.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[331]</a></span></p> - -<p>At first they had a favouring wind and seas not -rough or over-smooth. The ship bore strongly on, -and the spirits of most aboard were good. Now and -then broke out revelry and boisterousness, but the -men of weight kept rule among their followers, and -Captain Hugh Bard would have order where he -commanded. The wilder sort, of whom there were -enough aboard, must content themselves with suppressed -quarrels, secret gaming, a murmur of feverish -and unstable talk and conjecture. There were -those who, wherever they were, must have excitement -to feed upon. Their daily life must be peppered -with a liberal hand, heightened to a fevered -and whirling motion with no line of advance. These -were restless, and spread their restlessness upon the -Silver Queen. But there was much stolidity aboard, -and at first and for many days it counteracted.</p> - -<p>The wind blew, the sails filled, they drove cheerily -on. They came to the Canaries, on the old passage, -then drove westward. Days passed, many days. -They came to where they might begin to look for -islands. And here a storm took them and carried -them out of their reckoning, and here their luck fell -away from them. The storm was outlasted, but -after it there befell a calm. The wind failed, sank -away until there was not a breath. Sullen and stubborn, -the calm lasted, weary day after weary day. -The sails hung lank, the water made not even a small -lipping sound, the crowned woman at the prow stood -full length and steady, staring at a glassy floor.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[332]</a></span> -The sea was oil, the sky brazen, and the spirits -flagged like the flagging sails. Day after day, day -after day...</p> - -<p>At dawn one morning Aderhold and Joan leaned -against the rail and looked at the purple sea. It lay -like a vast gem, moveless and hard. The folk upon -the ship were still sleeping. The seamen aloft in the -rigging or moving upon the decks troubled them not, -hardly looked their way.</p> - -<p>“If you held a feather before you,” said Joan, “it -would not move a hair’s breadth! They are to pray -for a wind to-day. Master Evans will pray—all -aboard will pray. Is it chained somewhere, or idle -or asleep, or locked in a chest, and will we turn the -key that way?”</p> - -<p>“Did you see or speak to George Dragon yesterday?”</p> - -<p>“No. Why?”</p> - -<p>“Some of these men brought <i>aqua vitæ</i> or usquebaugh -aboard with them. He games for it and wins. -And then his tongue wags more than it should.”</p> - -<p>“I did not know.... Danger, again?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. He thinks he has done no harm, then is -alarmed, penitent, protests that he will not—and -then it’s all done again.... Poor human weakness!”</p> - -<p>“And if—?”</p> - -<p>“We will not look at that now,” said Aderhold. -“It would unroll itself soon enough.—Joan, Joan! -I would that you were safe!”</p> - -<p>“I am safe. I would that you—”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[333]</a></span></p> - -<p>“I will match your ‘I am safe.’ I, too, am safe. -Nothing here can quench the eternal, flowing life! -But until we have lifted this level and built more -highly we shall feel its pains ... and feel them for -one another. And now I ache for your danger.”</p> - -<p>The east was carmine, the sea from purple turned -carmine—carmine eastward from the Silver Queen -to the horizon; elsewhere a burnished play of greens -and blues, a vast plain, still, still! It flowed around -and away to the burning horizon, and not a sail and -not a breath, and no sound in the cordage overhead. -The deepening light flowed between Joan and Aderhold, -and in it, suddenly, the body of each was -beautiful in the other’s eyes.... The sun came up, a -red-gold ball. Neither man nor woman had spoken, -and now, suddenly, too, with the full dayspring, the -ship was astir, men were upon the decks. Gilbert -Aderhold, Joan Heron stepped back into the violet -shadow; here were Giles and John Allen.</p> - -<p>Up to these now came Master Evans, the minister -bound for Jamestown, a stout, gentle-faced man in -a sad-coloured suit. “Fast as though the ship were -in the stocks!” he said. “But if the Lord is gracious, -we will pray her free! Breakfast done, we will gather -together and make hearty supplication.” He looked -across to the sun, mailed now in diamond, mounting -blinding and fierce. The sweet coolness of the earlier -hour was gone; wave on wave came heat, heat, heat! -Master Evans clasped more closely the Bible in his -hand. “Thou sun whom for Israel’s sake the Lord<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[334]</a></span> -halted in thy course and held thee nailed fast above -Gibeon! Dost thou think if He chooses now to veil -thy face with cloud and to blow thy rays aside, thou -canst prevent? And thou hot and moveless air, if -He choose to drive thee against the stern of this ship -and into the hollow of these sails, wilt thou make -objection? Nay, verily! And why should He not -choose? Here upon this ship are not infidels and -heathen, but his own servants and sheep! Wherefore -we will kneel and beseech Him, and perchance a -miracle may fall like manna.”</p> - -<p>He looked smilingly about him, then, pressing his -Bible closely, went on to other emigrants.... Later -in the morning all upon the Silver Queen were -drawn together to make petition for a prospering -wind. All save the sick were there. Giles and John -Allen stood with the others, knelt with the others. -“Have we not a chronicle of Thy deeds,” prayed -Master Evans. “Didst Thou not make a dry road -through an ocean for a chosen people? Didst Thou -not, at the Tower of Babel, in one hour shake one -language into all the tongues that are heard upon the -earth? Didst Thou not enable Noah to bring into -the Ark in pairs all the beasts of this whole earth? -Didst Thou not turn a woman into a pillar of salt, -and give powers of speech to an ass, and preserve -three men unsinged in a fiery furnace? Didst Thou -not direct the dew on the one night to moisten only -the fleece of Gideon and not any of the earth besides, -and on the next night to glisten over the face of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[335]</a></span> -earth, but to leave the fleece unmoistened? And are -not we thy servants even as were Gideon and Lot -and Noah?...”</p> - -<p>The calm held. A sky of brass, an oily sea, heat -and heat, and now more sickness, and now an uneasy -whisper as to the store of water! The whisper -grew, for the ship lay still, day after day, as though -she had never moved nor ever would do so. Panic -terror came and hovered near the Silver Queen. -Captain Bard fell ill, lay in fever and delirium.... -The mate took command—no second Captain -Bard, but a frightened man himself. There was -aboard a half-crazed fellow who began to talk of -Ill-Luck. “The ship hath Ill-Luck. Who brought it -aboard? Seek it out and tie it to the mast and shoot -it with your arquebuse! Then, mayhap, the wind -will blow.” He laughed and mouthed of Ill-Luck, -until crew and passengers all but saw a shadowy -figure. Time crawled by, and the calm held and the -panic grew.</p> - -<p>There came an hour when the bolt fell, foreseen by -Aderhold. Before it ran a whisper; then there fell a -pause and an ominous quiet; then burst the voices, -fast and thick. It was afternoon, the sun not far -from the horizon, the sea red glass. Aderhold came -up on deck from the captain’s cabin. He looked -about him and saw a crowd drawn together. Out of -it issued a loud voice. “Ill-Luck? What marvel -there is ill-luck?” Noise mounted. The half-crazed -fellow suddenly began to shrill out, “Ill-Luck! Ill-Luck!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[336]</a></span> -There she sits!” He burst from the throng -and pointed with his finger. Away from the stir, on -a great coil of rope near a slung boat, there sat, -looking out to sea, John Allen.</p> - -<p>The mate, with him several of the more authoritative -adventurers and also Master Evans, came out -of the state cabin. “What’s all this? What has -happened?”</p> - -<p>A man of the wilder sort aboard, a ruffler and -gamester, was pushed forward by the swarm. “My -masters, there’s one aboard named George Dragon -who, being somewhat drunk, hath let drop news -that we hold hath a bearing upon this ship’s poor -fortune! He saith that we carry escaped prisoners—runaways -from the King’s justice—rebels, too, to -religion—”</p> - -<p>“Ill Luck! Ill Luck! There sits Ill Luck!” cried -the half-crazed one, and pointed again.</p> - -<p>The swarm began to speak with a general voice. -“And we say that we won’t get a wind, but will lie -here until water is gone and we die of thirst and rot -and sink.... If we’ve got men aboard who are -bringing misfortune on us.... Twelve days lying -here and not a breath! The captain ill and twenty -men besides, and the water low.... There’s Scripture -for it.... What’s the good of praying for a -wind, if all the time we’re harbouring his foes?... -Held here, as though we were nailed to the sea floor, -and the water low! The ship’s cursed.... We want -George Dragon made to tell their names—”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[337]</a></span></p> - -<p>Suddenly George Dragon himself was among them—red-faced -and wry-mouthed, but to-day thick-tongued -also and stumbling. He looked about him -wildly. “What’s all this chattering? Talking like -monkeys!—Waked me up—but I won and he -paid—good stuff—” He saw Aderhold and -lurched toward him. When he was near he spoke -and imagined that none else could hear him. “Don’t -look so grimly upon me, Master Aderhold!” he said. -“I’ve dropped not a word, as I told you I wouldn’t. -’Zooks! I’m not one to peach—”</p> - -<p><i>Aderhold!</i> With one sharp sound the name ran -through the swarm. “Not Allen!—<i>Aderhold</i>....” -There were those here from that port town and the -surrounding country,—those who had heard that -name before. A man cried out, “Aderhold! That -was the sorcerer who was to be burned!” Another: -“They escaped—The sorcerer and apostate and -the witch Joan Heron—”</p> - -<p>“Ill Luck! Ill Luck!” cried the Bedlamite. “There -she stands!”</p> - -<p>John Allen had risen from the coil of rope and -stood against the slung boat. The throng swung its -body that way, hung suspended one long moment, -open-mouthed, wide-eyed, then with a roaring cry-flung -itself across the space between. Aderhold -reached her side, but the throng came, too, hurled -him down and laid hands upon her. One clutched -her shirt and jerkin and tore them across. She stood -a woman revealed.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[338]</a></span></p> - -<p>“The witch! The witch!” they roared and struck -her to the deck.</p> - -<p>The mate was not the man that was the captain, -but he knew what the captain would do, and where -he was able he copied. The few superior colonists -were not superior to witch-fear, but they had a preference -for orderly judgement and execution. Master -Evans was of a timid and gentle nature and abhorred -with his bodily eyes to see violence done. He -believed devoutly that in the interests of holiness -witches, infidels, and sorcerers must be put to death, -but he would not willingly himself behold the act -which his religion approved. There were others -aboard amenable to discipline, and bold enough to -escape panic over mere delay. The sorcerer and the -witch were drawn from the hands of the more enraged. -Their arms were bound across; they were -thrust into the ship’s dungeon. With them went -Humphrey Lantern, sober enough now—poor wry-mouthed -man!... In the state cabin there was held -a council. “Keep the wretches close under hatches -until Virginia is reached,” said the cooler sense. -“Then let the officers of the settlement hang them, -on dry land and after solemn judgement. Or let -them be prisoned in Jamestown until a ship is sailing -home, taken back to England, and hanged there. If, -as may well be the case, the Silver Queen hath been -cursed for their sakes, surely now that they are -ironed there below, and their doom certain in the -end, the Almighty will lift the curse! At least, wait<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[339]</a></span> -and see if the calm be not broken.” Within the -cabin and without were malcontents, but the soberer -counsel prevailed. The mate agreed to keep the -crew from mutiny, the moderate-minded adventurers -to tame the wilder, more frightened and impatient -spirits.... That very night the calm vanished.</p> - -<p>The calm vanished in a wild uprush of clouds and -stir of the elements. The heat and savour of brass, -the stillness of death, the amazing blue of the sky, -the splashed red of sunrise and sunset went away. -In their place came darkness and a roaring wind. -At first they went under much canvas; it was a -drunken delight to feel the spray, to see the crowned -woman drink the foam, to hear the whistling and the -creaking, to know motion again. But presently they -took in canvas.... Twenty-four hours after the first -hot puff of air, they were being pushed, bare-masted, -as by a giant’s hand over a sea that ran in -mountains. The sky was black-purple, torn by -lightnings, the rain fell with a hissing fury, the wind -howled now, howled too loudly!</p> - -<p>As the calm would not break, so now the storm -would not break. It roared and howled and the -water curved and broke over the decks of the Silver -Queen. A mast went, the ship listed, there arose a -cry. The rain and lightning and thunder ceased, but -never the wind and the furious sea and the darkened -sky. The Silver Queen was beaten from wave to -wave, now smothered in the hollow, now rising dizzily -to the moving summit. The waves combed over<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[340]</a></span> -her, they struck her as with hammers, her seamen -cried out that there was sprung a leak, it came to be -seen that she might not live. The panic of the calm -gave way to that of the storm.</p> - -<p>And now they cried out wildly that the voyage -was cursed, and that God Almighty who had -plagued Israel for Achan’s sin was plaguing them -for that they kept aboard most vile offenders and -rebels such as these! Those that were still for delay -kept quarter yet a little longer, but while the wind -somewhat lessened, the leak gained, and panic attacked -them too. The captain lay ill and out of his -head, the mate was no stronger than they who -wished clearance made. In a black and wild morning, -the livid sky dragging toward them, the sea running -high, they lowered a boat and placed in it -Aderhold and Joan and Humphrey Lantern. They -might, perhaps, have held the last with them, carrying -him in irons to Virginia, but when he found -what was toward he cursed them so horribly that no -wizard could have thought of worse imprecations. -They shivered and thrust him into the boat, where -he knelt and continued his raving. “Hush!” said -Aderhold. “Let us die quietly.”</p> - -<p>The sailors loosed the small boat and pushed it -outward from the Silver Queen. It fell astern, the -black water widened between. The ship, mad to get -on, to put distance between her and the curse, flung -out what sail the tempest would let her carry. It -made but a slight pinion, but yet wing enough to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[341]</a></span> -take her from that speck upon the ocean, the boat -she had set adrift.... Not she had set adrift, but -Ignorance, Fear and Superstition, their compound, -Cruelty, and their blind Prætorian, Brute Use of -Brute Force. There had been one pale ray of something -else. Master Evans had insisted that there be -put in the boat a small cask of water and a portion -of ship’s bread.</p> - -<p>The Silver Queen hurried, hurried over the wild -and heaving sea, beneath a low sky as grey as iron. -The many gazing still lost at last all sight of the open -boat. It faded into the moving air, or it was drawn -into the sea, they knew not which. But it was gone, -and they made bold to hope that now God would -cease to plague them.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[342]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER XXVI</h2> - -<p class="pch">THE OPEN BOAT</p> - -<p class="pn1"><span class="smcap">That</span> day and night they in the open boat merely -lived to die. With each wave of a sea yet in storm -Death overhung them, the foam atop gleaming -down like a white skull. The boat rode that wave, -and then Death rose on another. There seemed -naught to do in life but to meet Death—a little -candle left to go forth by. Death preoccupied them—it -was so wide and massive, it came against them -in such tourney shocks. “Now ... No!—Then -now....” But still the boat lived and the candle -burned. When the dawn broke the waves were seen -to be lessening in might.</p> - -<p>That day the sea went down and the sky cleared. -Sea and sky turned a marvel of blue, Indian, wondrous. -There was a wind, steadily and quietly blowing, -but it served them not who had no sail. All -around—all around the intense sea spread to the -horizon, and no sail showed and no land. The sun -mounted and for all the moving air they felt its -heat which increased. Heat and light—light—light....</p> - -<p>The cask of water.... They found beside it a -small drinking-cup of horn, and they agreed that each -should drink this once filled each day. It was little,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[343]</a></span> -but so they might keep Death at bay so many days. -They also portioned out the ship’s bread. Likewise -they watched for a sail. They were now in seas -where ships might be looked for; west and south -must lie the islands held by Spain. Once two sea-birds -flew past them, and that would mean that land -was not inconceivably far away. But they saw no -land, and no sail was etched against the sapphire -sky. Loneliness profound, and heat and light....</p> - -<p>All was done that could be done to preserve life. -It remained to live it.... But poor Humphrey Lantern, -whom the other two tried to comfort, would -not be comforted. He sat and bit his nails, full of -remorse and horror, then passed through stages of -anger to a melancholy, and thence to a dull indifference, -silence, and abstraction. They could not rouse -him. Aderhold spoke in vain of the Low Countries -and the wars, and of all the good that they owed him, -and of how they might yet live to remember these -days not unkindly. Lantern, huddled in the bottom -of the boat, looked at them blankly. His abused -body sank more quickly than did theirs.... He had -a knife, and at last one night, when they had been -drifting long days and nights, he struck it into his -heart. The body, swaying against Aderhold, roused -him from uneasy sleep. His exclamation waked -Joan; she put out her hand and raised it wet with -blood. A moon so great and shining lit the night -that they could see well enough what had been done. -Lantern was dead. They laid him straight in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[344]</a></span> -bottom of the boat. Aderhold drew out and washed -the knife, and then they sat beside the dead man -until the moon paled in the vast rose-flush of dawn. -Then, while sea and sky were so beauteous, they -lifted the body; then, while they looked to the -brightening east, let it leave their hands for the -great deep. Wind and current bore the boat slowly -onward and away. The two were now so weak that -they lay still as after great and prolonged exertion.</p> - -<p>The day burned to its height, flamed to its close. -There came a sunset of supernal beauty, and then -the pitying, brief twilight and the glory of the -southern night. The coolness gave a little strength. -Aderhold set the cup to the mouth of the cask and -poured for each a shallow draught of water. They -should not have drunk till morning, for their store -was nearly gone. But with one mind they took this, -to give them voice, to free them for a little from gross -pain. When it was done they turned each to the -other, came each to the other’s arms.</p> - -<p>Another dawn—the furnace of the day—sunset—the -night. The wheel went round and they, -bound to it, came again to dawn and then to strong -light and heat. When they had drunk this morning, -there remained of the water but one cupful more. -They lay, hand clasping hand, in the bottom of the -boat that now drifted on a waveless sea. Sometimes -they murmured to each other, but for the most part -they lay silent. There was now no outward beauty -in the two. They lay withered, scorched, fleshless,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[345]</a></span> -half-naked, human life at last gasp between the -ocean and the sky. Within, all strength and beauty -could summon only negatives. They did not complain, -they did not curse, they did not despair, they -did not hate. Within was a stillness as of a desert, -with a low wind of life moving over it. The physical -could not lift far into emotion, but what there was -was love and pity. Emotion could hardly attain to -thought, nor thought to intuition, but what there -was knew still the splendour and terror and all -things that we are. Day—eve—the night—the -dawn—day. They measured out the last water in -the cask and shared it justly between them. They -lay side by side, his hand upon her breast, her hand -upon his. The fierce heat, the fierce sunlight rose -and reigned....</p> - -<p>A crazy, undecked sailboat came out of the haze. -It was returning from a great island south to a group -of small islands lying northerly in these seas, and it -held five or six Indians—not the fiercer, southern -Caribs, but mild Lucayans. One spied a dot upon -the waters and pointed it out. They drew slowly -nearer in a light wind, and when they saw that it was -a boat adrift, tacked and came up with it. A man -leaned overboard, seized and drew it in, and with a -rope fastened it to the stern of the larger craft. -Uttering exclamations, they examined their prize. -In the bottom of the boat lay a man and a woman in -man’s dress. They lay unconscious, wreathed in -each other’s arms, two parched and gaunt creatures<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[346]</a></span> -who had suffered the extremity of exposure, hunger, -and thirst. The Indians thought that they were -dead, and, indeed, they looked like death and terrible -death. But when they were lifted and dragged -into the larger boat, and when water was put between -their blackened and shrivelled lips, there -came a faint stir and a moaning breath.... The -Indians had good store of water in cask and calabash; -they gave it again from time to time, and -they crumbled cassava bread and fed that too.... -Joan and Aderhold turned back to the land of the -living.</p> - -<p>At first the Indians thought that they were Spanish, -for they had no association with other white -men. Association with the Spaniard had been cruel -enough for them; they belonged to the disappearing -remnant of a people swept by the thousands from -their islands to the larger islands, enslaved, oppressed, -extirpated. These in the boat were runaways -from a hard master, who had stolen this boat -and put out, crazy as it was, on what might seem a -hopeless voyage. Did they pass through days and -nights, and leagues and leagues of sea and go uncaptured -by some Spanish craft, did they come at last -to their own island, what would they find there? A -desert, with, perhaps, a tiny cluster of palm-thatched -huts, still clinging, looking for some landing party, -looking to be swept away as had been their kith and -kin—a perishing group, dejection, languor of life.... -But homesickness drove them on; better a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[347]</a></span> -death-bed with freedom than the peopled great -island where they were slaves! They had felt the -Spanish lash and the Spanish irons; they looked -doubtfully enough upon the white man and woman, -and it was perhaps a question whether now they -would not pay back.... But when at last Aderhold -spoke, it was in English. They did not know that -tongue and they answered in altered and distorted -Spanish. He had a little Spanish, and he made them -understand briefly that the two had been in an English -ship and that there had been a storm and that -they were castaways. They were not Spanish, and -they did not know the great island or any of the -masters. They were English, whom the Spanish -hated. That fact being weighed, the Indians turned -friendly, laughed and stroked their hands in token -of amity, then set apart for the two a great calabash -of water, and gave them more cassava bread.</p> - -<p>Joan and Aderhold ate and drank. The will to -live was strong, for life had turned a rainbow, and a -wild and beautiful forest, and a song of the high and -the deep, and an intense pulsation. The two came -swiftly up from Death’s threshold. Before the boat -came into sight of land the light was back in their -sunken eyes and some strength in their frame.... -The land seemed a low, island shore. The excited -Indians gesticulated, spoke in their own tongue. -Aderhold, questioning them, learned that it was the -outermost of their island group, but not their own -island to which they were bound. They saw pale<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[348]</a></span> -sand and verdure green as emerald; then the night -came and covered all from sight. No light of torch -or of cooking-fire pierced the darkness. The blank -shores slipped past, the boat left them astern, and -now again all around was the sea.... But though it -was night there was no sleeping. The returning -exiles were excited, restless, garrulous. The two -learned that there were many islands and now -almost no people. The people—the Indians beat -their breasts—were gone now, almost all gone. For -the masters sent men from the great islands to burn -the villages and take the men and women and children -and drive them aboard ships and carry them -off to make poor slaves of them. They had done so -when the oldest men were children, and when the -oldest men’s fathers were children. But now the -masters did not come, for the men and women and -children were all gone—all gone but a few, a few. -The returned from long slavery did not know if -these few were yet there, yet clinging to their island.</p> - -<p>Night passed, dawn came, the wind blew them on. -Now they saw islets and islands, but no craft upon -the water, or sign of life. Then, in the afternoon, the -Indians’ lode-star lifted upon the horizon. They put -their helm for it, a freshening wind filled their sail. -Presently they saw it clear, a low island, here ivory -white and here green as emerald. The Indians -shouted and wept. They caressed one another in -their own tongue, they gesticulated, they held out -their arms to the nearing shore.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[349]</a></span></p> - -<p>The shore dilated. Reefs appeared to be warily -avoided, and the water grew unearthly blue and -clear. Green plumes of palm seemed to wave and -beckon. Back from the narrow ivory beach, inland -out of a break in the belt of green, rose a feather of -smoke. The Indians when they saw it were as mad -people. They leaped to their feet, they embraced -one another, they laughed, they strained their -bodies toward the land, and broke into a savage -chant of home-coming.... Now they were in a tortuous -channel between <i>cays</i> and the island. The -island beach widened, and now human forms appeared—not -many, and at first with a hesitant and -fearful air; then, as they became assured that here -was only one small sailboat, with a bolder advance, -until at last they came down to the edge of the small -bight to which the boat was heading. They were -Indians like those in the boat, a mild and placable -strain, dulled and weakened by the century-old huge -wrong done them. They were but a handful. In the -whole island there was now but one small village.</p> - -<p>The boat glided past a fanged reef and came into a -tiny crystal anchorage where the bright fish played -below like coloured birds in the air. They lowered -sail; they came as close as might be to the shelving -land; the Indians leaped into the water and made -ashore with loud cries and incoherent words. The -islanders swept about them, surrounded them; there -rose a wild, emotional questioning and greeting, -laughing and crying.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[350]</a></span></p> - -<p>The infection spread to Joan and Aderhold. Behind -them lay pain and horror, and pain and horror -might again claim them. But now Time had spread -for them a mighty reaction. It was so blessed to be -alive!—they were so prepared to embrace and love -life—every material thing seemed so transfused -and brightly lit from within—they laughed themselves -and felt in their eyes the happy dew.... -They, too, must take to the water to come ashore. -It was naught to them, the shallow bright flood. -They crossed it as had done the Indians, and stepped -upon the land.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[351]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER XXVII</h2> - -<p class="pch">THE ISLAND</p> - -<p class="pn1"><span class="smcap">A few</span> miles in length, fewer in breadth, the island -lay in a sub-tropic clime. During its winter all the -air was neither cold nor hot, but of a happy in-between -and suave perfection. Its summer brought -strong heat and at times wild tempests of rain and -wind, thunder and lightning. For the most part the -land rose but a little way above the sea, a shallow -soil with a coral base. Out of this mould sprang a -forest of eternal greenness. Once there had been -a number of villages, each in its small clearing, but -one by one they had been destroyed and the clearings -had gone back to the forest.</p> - -<p>This one larger village had outlasted. Dwindling -year by year, before it, at no great term, death and -absorption, when all the island would be desert, it -yet showed a number of irregularly placed, circular -huts woven of branch and reed and thatched with -palm. To this village Joan and Aderhold were -swept together with the escaped slaves, the returned -exiles. Besides the tenanted huts there were others -from which the last of the occupants had died, but -which were not yet fallen to the earth and become a -part of the forest floor. Joan and Aderhold were -given one of these abodes standing under tamarind<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[352]</a></span> -and palm, and here food was brought them. All the -village was in commotion, restless and excited, for -seldom and most seldom in all the years did any one -come back.... When night fell there ensued feasting -and revelry, a strange picture-dance, performed -by men and women, long recitatives wherein some -sonorous voice told of this people’s woes, of their -palmy days, and how the white men came in the -time of their fathers, and they took them for gods -and they proved themselves not so—not gods but -devils! The torrent expression of wrongs flowed on. -Sharp cries and wailings came from the dusky -figures seated in an ellipse about the narrator. Eyes -looked angrily across to where the white man and -woman sat and watched.</p> - -<p>Among the Indians of the sailboat had been an old -man with a finer, more intelligent face than was to -be found among his fellows. It was he, principally, -who had talked with the castaways. Now, on land, he -constituted himself their advocate and protector. -He had been, it seemed, the chief man of a vanished -village, and this present village, being without a -strong man, looked to him with deference. Now he -rose and spoke and the threatening looks faded. -These Indians were not of a fierce and cruel temper—and -the two strangers were not Spanish, but came -from a tribe whom the Spanish fought.... Danger -to the two from their hosts or captors passed away.</p> - -<p>The night went by in noise and feasting. With the -dawn the village sank into sleep. The home-coming<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[353]</a></span> -ones needed, after long adventure and strain, rest -and repose, while the friends and kindred at home -were used to swift and calm descendings to immobility -and profound sleep. Within and without the -tent-like huts lay the dusky, well-shaped forms, -almost bare, still as death, lying as though they had -been shot down by invisible arrows. The projecting -palm thatch, the overhanging, thick foliage, kept out -the fierce sun, made a green and brown gloom.</p> - -<p>Joan and Aderhold slept, too. For them the immediate -need was health again, strength again, energy -in which to base the wonderful flower of life. They -lay like children near each other, and slept the livelong -day. When, in the last bright light, they -waked, there was cassava bread, and tropic fruit and -water from a neighbouring spring. They ate and -drank and talked a little, about indifferent things—only -nothing now was indifferent, but rich and significant. -But it was as though they would hold away -from them for a little while their deeper bliss; would -not speak of that until they could speak in health, -with glow and vigour and beauty and power! -About them the village half waked, half slept. They -heard women’s and children’s voices, but dreamily. -The woods, that had been very still during the -heat of the day, were now as murmurous as rapids of -a stream. All manner of winged life made a continuous -sound. Joan and Aderhold rested their heads -again upon the woven palm mat and slept the deep -night through.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[354]</a></span></p> - -<p>With the second morning the Indian village resumed -its normal process of existing. The women -practised a kind of embryonic agriculture. The men -hunted not at all, though they trapped birds; but -they fished, pushing out into the turquoise sea in canoes -hollowed from tree-trunks. The women plaited -baskets, and cut and dried gourds large and small. -They had cotton, and they knew how to weave it -into the scant clothing needed in such a clime. -They scraped the cassava root into meal and made -bread, and gathered and brought in the staple fruits. -In the village were to be found in some slight number -and variety matters not of savage make. During -the more than a hundred years since the great -Genoese and his Spanish sailors had come upon this -group, such things had drifted here, as it were, upon -the tide and the winds. Thus there were to be seen -several cutlasses and daggers, together with a rusted -Andrea Ferrara, a great iron pot, and smaller utensils, -a sea-chest, a broken compass, a Spanish short -mantle and hat and feather, some piece of furnishing -from a church, a drinking-cup, a length of iron -chain. But nothing had been left, or had been -traded for with Indians of other villages, for a long, -long time. The islands were desert and forgotten -... except that now of late sea-robbers and pirates -were, for that very reason, taking as anchorage, -refuges, and bases of operation, the intricate channels -and well-concealed harbours. But no pirate -ship had found as yet this inward-lying island. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[355]</a></span> -rested upon the sea as if forgotten or lost or inaccessible, -and its fading people knew at least a still and -not ungentle autumn.</p> - -<p>The old Indian came this morning to visit Aderhold -and Joan. Others had been before him; they had -held, perforce, a kind of levee. The children were not -more curious, nor simpler in their expression of curiosity, -than were the men and women. They had no -language in common with the castaways but that of -gesture, but they made this answer. The torn, sun-faded -clothing of the two, the fineness and tint of -their hair, the colour of their skin, Joan’s grey eyes, -the absurd sound of their speech at which the Indians -laughed heartily—every physical trait was of -interest. But as with children attention went little -further than that and was quick to flag. The levee -dispersed.</p> - -<p>But the old man’s interest went beyond eyes and -hair and a fair skin. He could speak in Spanish, too, -and Aderhold could answer. He was as curious as -the others, but his curiosity had a wider mental range. -The strangers’ country and its nature—their rank -there—why they left it—had their ship utterly -perished in the hurricane—these and other questions -he asked, with his fine, old, chieftain, shrewd, -not unhumorous face. Aderhold answered with as -much frankness as was possible. The old chief listened, -nodded, said briefly that he had heard men in -the great island speak of those other white men, the -English, and how they fought like devils. “But<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[356]</a></span> -devils’ devil not what I call devil,” said the chief. -“Devils’ god what I call devil.”</p> - -<p>He wished to know if the English were not coming -to fight the Spanish, and his eyes lit up, “Then come -rest here. Englishmen wouldn’t stamp foot upon us—eh?” -He observed that the hut was old and falling -down. “Not good place. Too much tree—too -much other houses all around. I like place see the -water—night and morning. Sit and think, think -where it ends.” He offered to have them a house -built. “Do it in one day. When you like it you look, -say where.”</p> - -<p>Presently he gazed at them thoughtfully, and held -up two fingers. “Sister and brother?”</p> - -<p>“No, not sister and brother. We are lovers.”</p> - -<p>“Ah, ah!” said the old chief. “I thought that, -yonder in the boat.—What is her name—and your -name?”</p> - -<p>“Joan—and Gilbert.”</p> - -<p>The old man said them over, twice and thrice, -pleased at mastering the strange sounds. “Joan—Gilbert. -Joan—Gilbert.” At last he went away, -but that was the beginning of a long and staunch -friendship.</p> - -<p>The day passed, the night. Another day dawned -and ran onward to an afternoon marvellously fair. -The season of hurricanes and great heat was passing; -the air was growing temperate, life-giving. This day -had been jewel-clear, with a tonic, blowing wind, -strong and warm. The narrow shore-line of wave-worn<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[357]</a></span> -rock and coralline sand lay only a little way -from the village. In the latter occurred a continual, -sleepy oscillation of its particles, talk and encounter, -and privacy had not been invented. Joan and Aderhold, -fairly as strong now as on that night when with -Gervaise and Lantern they broke prison, went this -afternoon down to the sea.</p> - -<p>It stretched before them, the great matrix from -which the life of the land had broken, the ancient -habitat. They left the village behind; a point of -woodland came between them and it. Now there -was only the ocean, the narrow shore, the lift of -palms and many another tropic tree, and the arch of -the deep blue sky. The tide was coming in. They -sat upon a ledge of coral rock and watched it. The -water, beyond the foam of the breaking rollers, -seemed of an intenser hue than the sky itself—and -calm, calm—with never a sail, never a sail.</p> - -<p>“We may live here and die here—an old man -and woman,” said Joan: “die together.”</p> - -<p>“I am thirty-four years old,” said Aderhold. “I -will have to die before you.”</p> - -<p>“No. I will die a little sooner than I might.”</p> - -<p>“No! I will grow younger—”</p> - -<p>“We talk nonsense,” said Joan. “We sit here, as -young and as old each as the other! And we shall -die together.”</p> - -<p>A wave broke at their feet with a hollow sound. It -fell on her last word, and it seemed to repeat it with a -sullen depth, <i>Together</i>. It came to both that they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[358]</a></span> -were to have died together, there in England, and -that if ever they were retaken, as the great strangeness -of life might permit, then certainly in all probability -they would die together. That was one way in -which the granting of their wish might be taken as -assured.... But they saw no sail, and they saw that -now the village never looked for a sail.... Safety -might, indeed, have come to dwell with them. The -thought of omen faded out.</p> - -<p>The wind blew around them warm and strong. It -was full tide, and about them foam and pearl, and -the voice of mother sea. They sat with clasped -hands on their coral ledge. It was coming back to -them—it had come back to them—health and -glow and colour and spring. Joan was fairer than -she had been in Heron’s cottage. First youth, youth -of the senses, youth controlled and well-guided, but -youth, revived like the phœnix in Aderhold the -scholar. He had seemed graver and older than he -truly was. In him strength, activity, adventure, -interest, will, and daring had early risen into the -realm of the mind. There they had bourgeoned, -pressed on, been light of step and high of heart. But -the outward man had not been able to keep pace. -Now a deep passion changed that. He looked as -young as Joan; both looked immortal youth. Each -put hands upon the other’s shoulders, they drew -together, they kissed. The voice of the ocean, and of -the wind and of the forest spoke for them, and their -own hearts spoke.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[359]</a></span></p> - -<p>The next day, when the old chief visited them, -they went back to his proposal of a new house. The -idea found him ready as a child. It was among his -traits to be easily fired with the joy of building. He -would speak to the chief men and the young men, -and they would tell the women to do it at once. -Where would Joan and Gilbert—he produced the -names with pride—have it built?</p> - -<p>They took him with them and showed him. Just -without the village, so near that they could hear its -murmur, yet so far that there was not oppression, in -a rich grove, opening to a bit of sandy shore and a -wide view of the azure sea.... The old chief gazed -with appreciation, nodded, “Good! Go talk to chief -men now.” So much a man of his word was he that -the next day saw the women bringing bundles of -reeds and palm leaves for the thatching. Also young -trees were cut for the posts. Aderhold and Joan -studied the method, saw how they might extend, add -a shed-like room or two, make a gallery for working -under shade. The old chief and the others, too, from -the great island, had ideas. The village was in a gay, -a stimulated mood. It was a gala month—not -every other day, nor any other day, did captive -tribesmen come back, or castaways appear that were -not Spanish, human driftwood making human interest! -They built for the two from far away so large -and good a house that they themselves marvelled at -it. “Houses like that”—a woman said to Joan—“in -houses like that our fathers live, eating bread<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[360]</a></span> -with the Great Spirit!” When the house was done, -the village feasted, and an Indian, rising, addressed -the castaways and said that now they were members -and an adopted man and woman of the tribe, and -that the village expected much good from them. -“We show you how we do—you show us how your -people do—show us how to kill Spaniards when -they come!”</p> - -<p>The next day Joan and Aderhold took possession -of their house. When the crowd who had accompanied -them to it was gone, and when the old chief -was gone, and when there came the evening stir -and murmur from the village, the two built their -fire, and Joan made cakes of cassava bread and -Aderhold brought water from a little spring that was -their own. They had gold and russet fruit, and they -sat and ate before their own door and were content. -It was a bright and lovely evening, with a light upon -the sea and the palm fronds slowly swinging. The -voice of the village came not harshly, but with a certain -mellow humming, and the voice of the sea upon -the reef came not harshly either. When the meal was -finished, they covered the embers of their fire so that -it should not go out, then rose from their knees and -hand in hand went the round of their domain. Here -they would make a garden, here they would bring the -water to a trough nearer the hut. Back at the doorway -they looked within and saw their house fair and -clean, yet fragrant of the green wood, with store of -primitive household matters, with the sleeping-mats<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[361]</a></span> -spread. They turned and saw the great sea and the -sky wide and deep. The evening wind, too, had -arisen and caressed them, blowing richly and -strongly. A tall palm tree rose from clean white -sand. They sat beneath this while the stars came -shining forth, and that of which they spoke was -Love.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[362]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER XXVIII</h2> - -<p class="pch">FOUR YEARS</p> - -<p class="pn1"><span class="smcap">No</span> Spaniards came to be driven back, had Aderhold -been that magician who could do it. It was like a -lost island, or the first peopled island, or the last. Day -after day they watched a tranquil sea and saw no -point of any sail. Time passed. The Indians from -the great island ceased to dream of recapture. Joan -and Aderhold ceased to dream of being taken, -wrenched apart; ceased to dream of the open boat -and of the Silver Queen and of the prison and the -gallows field. They did not cease to dream of Hawthorn, -of Heron’s Cottage and the Oak Grange, of -Hawthorn Forest, and all the life that lay on yonder -side the prison gates. Joan dreamed of her father -and of her uncle the huntsman, of the castle and -Mistress Borrow and others there, the town as once -it had been to her, and of Hawthorn as once it had -been. She dreamed of Heron’s cottage—of every -item there—the well under the fruit trees, the bees -under the thatch, the daffodils and every later -flower, of her kitchen and the hearth and the old settle, -and her spinning-wheel. She dreamed of gathering -faggots in Hawthorn Forest. She dreamed of -Alison and of Will the smith’s son and of Goodman -Cole and of many another—the vintner in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[363]</a></span> -town, Cecily Lukin and the forester’s wife, old -Master Hardwick—many another. But all were -blended together in a dream world, in a gay and -bright picture-book, where if there were witches they -were harmless good souls who rather helped people -than otherwise, and where no one was persecuted for -thinking things out for one’s self. In the picture -book it seemed almost a laudable thing to do. Aderhold -dreamed—and his dream world was wider by -his greater range of this life’s experience. He -dreamed of Hawthorn and Hawthorn Forest and all -the roads thereabouts, of the Oak Grange and of -Heron’s cottage; but he dreamed likewise of a world -beyond Hawthorn. He dreamed of his own childhood -and boyhood, and they, too, had a picture-book -setting, where the rough became only rich and varied, -and what had seemed sorrow and harm turned an -unhurt side. He dreamed of his first manhood, and -of his search for knowledge, the sacred hunger and -thirst and the lamp of aspiration in his hand. He -dreamed of old woes and scars, happenings many -an one, persons many an one.... But neither he nor -Joan dreamed any more, with a frightful sense of -nearness, with a cold start of waking, of sudden, -clutching hands, of separation, of dark and deep -gaols where neither could hear the other’s voice, or if -the other’s voice was heard, indeed, then heard in a -long cry of anguish. Fear spread its dark wings and -left them, and took with it intensity of watchfulness -and all the floating motes that made its court.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[364]</a></span></p> - -<p>They had now great strength and health, Joan’s -renewed, Aderhold’s such as it had never been. -They stood erect and bright-eyed, their movements -had rhythm, the hand went with precision to its -task, the glance fell unerringly, the foot bore them -lightly. They bent to life with a smile, frequently -with laughter. If life was always a mighty riddle, if -at times it seemed a vivid disaster, yet indubitably -there were stretches, as now, when it became a -splendid possession!</p> - -<p class="pp6sq p1">“‘I have heard talk of bold Robin Hood,</p> -<p class="pp7">And of brave Little John,</p> -<p class="pp6">Of Friar Tuck and Will Scarlett,</p> -<p class="pp7">Locksley and Maid Marian—’”</p> - -<p class="pn1">sang Joan. She wove as she sang, for there was -cotton for weaving, and she had learned of the Indian -women and greatly bettered their instruction. -She saw garments for them both, hanging from -the pegs, lying upon the shelves Aderhold had made. -She had traded her skill at many things for needles -of bone, for the vegetable dyes that the women used, -for various matters that she wanted. She was of all -women most fit for such a return to a younger world. -Sane and strong and skilled, with the artist arisen -from the mere workwoman, she turned back some -thousand years, and handled savage life with a creative -hand. On all sides latent power came forth. A -wise trader, she gathered what she needed; a good -teacher, she imparted knowledge as she went, without -ostentation, insensibly, with a fine unconsciousness;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[365]</a></span> -a worker of the best, she did that which her -hand found to do with <i>élan</i> and precision and an -assured result upon which to base further results. -She lacked not for leisure either, nor for a whimsical, -sceptical glance upon her own labours, nor for -an ability to let it all slip aside while she sat and -brooded upon the open sea.</p> - -<p>As for Aderhold, he was and was not the man of -the Oak Grange. He was that man freed where he -had been bound, fed where he had been starved.</p> - -<p>Their domain grew in fitness and beauty. By the -time the perfect winter had passed into the languors -of spring, and spring into the heats and rains of summer, -and summer again into cooler, fairer days, they -had achieved about them an Arcadian right simplicity, -as far from meagreness as from excess. The -large hut, palm-thatched, stood in a well-stocked -garden. Great trees gave them shade; a spring of -clear water for ever a cooling, trickling sound. -Around all they planted a flowering hedge. Within -this round sounded the hum of their industries and -their own clear voices. Without was the eternal -voice of the sea, and in and out and around, the -voice of the moving air.</p> - -<p>The murmur of the Indian village was likewise -there, but it did not come athwart; it travelled -equably with the other sounds. They had come to -have a fondness for the dwindling village, an affection -for this remnant of a remnant of a people. -They were poor savages, they had flaws and vices,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[366]</a></span> -but save that they were less complex, less intertwined -with later offshoots, more plain stalk and -plain word, their flaws and vices differed in no great -wise from those that might be viewed in France or -England. At times the village seemed like a village -of children, and then again it might seem very old -and somewhat wise. Once or twice they had seen it -waver toward a village of beasts, heavily swaying toward -the animal only. But Aderhold had seen that -happen in France and Italy—they might both think -that they had seen it happen in England. On the -very morrow it was something more than animal. -At times it was something much more—something -much higher. And they knew that flaws and vices -lurked in themselves also—unplucked-out weeds -yet living a slow dark life in the backward-reaching -abyss. They understood the village, and they tried -to help. They did help, and by slow degrees the village -came to change affection with them. As for the -old chief, every other day he came to see them.</p> - -<p>He was of an enquiring and speculative turn of -mind, and it was his wont to bring unsolved questions -to the vine-shaded strip of bare earth before -the hut, and there, seated on a mat with a few followers -squatted around, propound them to the two. -To most of the islanders all things, outside the narrowest -range, were supernatural. The old man’s -scope was wider, and the daring of his scepticism, -proportioned to his environment, would have qualified -him for a dungeon in most countries that Aderhold<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[367]</a></span> -knew.... Here upon this island all was as a -sketch, a faint model and portent only of what, in -seventeenth-century Europe, had become enlarged, -filled in and solid. Generically it was the same; it -was but a question of degree of intensity and of -accretions. These Indians also held for an external -deity, so extruded, so external that steps—that -intermediaries—must be extruded to cover the -extruded space between, to reach the extruded Ear -and Mind. Moreover, they did not maintain this a -flowing process, but continually let the extrusions of -remote ancestors dam the stream. They had idols -whom certainly not even the old chief might with -impunity criticize. They had “Thou shalts” and -“Thou shalt nots” which were wise and might long -remain so, and those which had been wise and were -now meaningless, colourless, making neither for much -good nor much harm, and those which might once -have been wise but were now hurtful, and those -which never had been wise and grew in folly. They -had notions, dim, not as yet fearfully positive, of a -future life of reward or punishment, where they would -do without limit or term—throughout eternity, -indeed—that which, Indians upon this island, they -most liked to do in this present moment, or would -suffer, alike for ever, just those pains which at present -they acutely disliked. They placed great merit -in belief without question, obedience without discrimination, -and a prostrate attitude. They had extruded -Authority. Nothing had a proper motion of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[368]</a></span> -its own, but everything was moved by something -else. The disclaimer of responsibility, of generic lot -and part, was general. The disinclination to examine -premises was supreme. They had found their -despot in Inertia.</p> - -<p>But the old chief was exceptional. He was wary -and paid respect to taboos. That done, he loved to -talk. He brought to Aderhold questions such as, at -the dawn of philosophy, an intelligent barbarian -might have put to Thales or Anaximander. Aderhold -answered as simply and well as he might; where -he could not answer, said so. Now and then the -more active-minded of the old man’s escort brought -queries. Joan also listened and questioned. Aderhold, -answering, taught in terms of natural science -and a general ethic—very simply, for that, here, -was the only way....</p> - -<p>But when the old chief and his followers had -gone away from the vine-clad porch, and the murmur -of the village came faintly across the evening, -when, their day’s labour done, they went down to -the sea, to the coral ledge or crescent of pale sand, -and lay there by the blue, unending water; or when, -night having fallen, they rested in the moonlight on -the black-and-white chequered ground beneath the -palms, they spoke more fully, shared more completely -the inner worlds. Love could not rest with -them in the physical. Freedom, dilation, redoubling, -rapid and powerful vibration, energy, colour, -music, all mounted from the denser to the rarer universe.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[369]</a></span> -Their minds interfused, there came moments -when their spirits might seem one iridescent orb. -They were one, ... only the next instant to be exquisitely -different ... then to approach and blend -again. At such times they spoke in low tones, with -slow, rounded words, of the deepest waters where -their souls drank of which they had knowledge, -or they spoke not at all, having no need to.... -At other times they talked of the past and the future -and the whole round world. Steadily they -learned of each other: Joan much from Aderhold, -Aderhold much from Joan.</p> - -<p>They had lived here a year—they had lived here -more than a year. When they had lived here two -years, when they, no more than the Indians about -them, watched the horizon for any ship, when they -had ceased to dream of separation, change, and disaster, -when it was fully home, with the sweetness -and fragrance of home—then was born their child.</p> - -<p>Joan lay upon the clean, woven mats in the bright -moonlight. Aderhold put the babe in her arms, then -stretched himself beside them. Her grey eyes opened -upon him. “Gilbert—Gilbert—I love you so—”</p> - -<p>“I love you so—”</p> - -<p>She took his hand and guided it with hers until it -rested upon the child, wrapped in cloth which she -had woven. “Life from life and added unto life,” -she said. “Love from love and added unto love.”</p> - -<p>The child was a woman child, and they named her -Hope. She grew and thrived and they had great joy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[370]</a></span> -in her. When the old chief came to see her, he held -her in his hands and gave her a musical name of his -own. They translated it, Bird-with-Wide-Wings. -Henceforward now they called her by this Indian -name and now they called her Hope. The old chief -grew fond of her, came oftener than ever, would sit -in sun or shade quite still and content beside the -cotton hammock in which she swung. The days -went by, the weeks, the months, and she continued -to thrive. She had Joan’s grey eyes, but save for this -she was liker Aderhold. She lay regarding them, or -laughed when they came toward her, or put out a -small hand to touch them; she was happy and well, -and they were glad, glad that she was on earth.</p> - -<p>The hot season came and the rains, and in August -heavy storms. Trees were levelled and the frail huts -of the village suffered. The sea came high upon the -land and the rain fell in sheets. In the dim hut with -the door fast closed, Aderhold and Joan and the -babe rested in security. The babe slept; the two lay -and listened to the fury without.</p> - -<p>“There comes into my mind,” said Joan, “the -black sky and the dead air and the lightning and -thunder that Sunday in Hawthorn Church.”</p> - -<p>“It came to me then, too,” answered Aderhold. -“Some finger in this storm strikes the key.”</p> - -<p>There was a silence. Both saw Hawthorn Church -again and the congregation, and Master Clement in -the pulpit. Both felt again the darkness of that -storm, the oppression and the sense of catastrophe.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[371]</a></span> -In mind again each, the remembered bolt having -fallen, left the church and took the homeward road. -Joan hurried once more over the sighing grass, past -the swaying trees, saw Heron’s cottage and the -breaking storm. Aderhold passed again through -Hawthorn Forest and crossed the stream before the -Oak Grange, reached again the fairy oak and the -Grange. He was again in Dorothy’s kitchen, stooping -over the fire—in his old room with his unfinished -book beneath his hand—upon the stairs—the -door was opening—the men to take him.... The -blast without the hut changed key. The babe woke, -and Joan, lifting her, moved to and fro. When she -was hushed and sleeping, the strong echo, the returned -emotion had disappeared. They kept silence -for a little, and then they talked, not of old things -but of the island, of their trees and garden and harm -from the hurricane that must be repaired, and then -of the village and the children of the village. They -were beginning now to teach these.</p> - -<p>The storm passed and other storms. There came -around again the days of balm, the perfect weather. -The child Hope was a year old. Their joy in her was -great, indeed. For themselves, they were husband -and wife, lovers, friends, fellow scholars, fellow workers, -playmates. Their friendship with the Indians was -stronger by a year, their service stronger. The old -chief came often and often, and the child crowed and -laughed and clapped her hands to see him.</p> - -<p>The balmy days, the perfect weather passed, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[372]</a></span> -the spring passed. Summer again with its heats and -rains was here. With the first great storm, in the hut -with the door fast closed, shutting out the swaying -and the wind and the hot, rain-filled air, Joan, playing -with the little Hope, keeping her from being terrified -by the darkness and the rush of sound, suddenly -fell quite still where she knelt. She turned her -head; her attitude became that of one who was -tensely and painfully listening.</p> - -<p>When she spoke it was with a strange voice. -“Does it come again to you as it did last year?”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” said Aderhold; “it comes by force of association. -Dismiss it from your mind.”</p> - -<p>“It comes as close as though it were going to be -real again.”</p> - -<p>“It is the darkness and oppression and the feeling -of being pent. It will pass.—Look at the Bird-with-Wide-Wings! -She is laughing at us.”</p> - -<p>The hurricane raved itself to a close; the light -came and the blue sky, the sun shone out. There followed -a week of this; then, one morning at sunrise, -Joan, coming out of the hut into the space beneath -the trees, looked seaward and uttered a cry. “Gilbert—Gilbert!”</p> - -<p>Aderhold came to her side. “What is it?”</p> - -<p>Her arm was raised and extended, the hand pointing. -A ship stood off the island.</p> - -<p>All that day it was there; it hovered, as it were, -it reconnoitred. It sent out no boats, but there was -something that said that it had seen the village.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[373]</a></span> -It came near enough, and the clearing would be -visible from the rigging. The Indians’ canoes, moreover, -were there upon the beach.... It was a ship -with dingy sails, with a bravo air, yet furtive, too. -Once it clapped on sail and dwindled to a flake, and -those who watched from out a screening belt of wood -thought that it was gone. But it seemed that it -meant only to sail around the island, for presently -the outlook in the tallest tree saw its shape, having -doubled a long point, enlarge again across this green -and silver spit. When the second morning dawned, -there it was again, dusky, ill-omened, riding the deep -water beyond the reef that somewhat guarded the -shore.... Then the air thickened, and there threatened -a hurricane. The ship turned and scudded -away. While the sky darkened, she vanished, sinking -beneath the horizon to the south.</p> - -<p>The storm broke, reigned and passed. When it -was over, when, save for the myriad small wreckage -and the whitened and high-running sea, there was -calm again, then fell talk and discussion enough as -to that ship, foreboding enough, excitement enough -in the village. The Indians made new spears or tried -trusted old ones, sharpening afresh every point. -They had bows and arrows, though they put more -dependence in their spears, and in short hatchets, -headed with bits of sharpened rock. Whatever -weapons there were were got in order. That done, all -that they could do was done. Their not unhealthful -clime, their search for food, their fishing, swimming,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[374]</a></span> -their games and ceremonial dances kept their bodies, -slight and not greatly muscular though they were, -yet in a condition of some strength and readiness. -Now they had only to wait.... They waited, but no -ship came back, nor other ships appeared.</p> - -<p>The bad season passed, the good days came -around again, and still no fleck of a sail showed on -all the round of the blue ocean. The Indians ceased -to glance up continually from whatever employment -they were about. Now they looked not once a day, -now they ceased all active expectation, now the -matter grew dim, remote, now it faded almost from -mind. The old chief, perhaps, still looked seaward, -but the village at large had short memories when -immediate anxieties were lifted. Life took up again -the old, smooth measure.</p> - -<p>But Aderhold and Joan could not forget. Subtly -they felt that the current was wearing another channel. -There were cloud shapes below the horizon. -They were happy. Their joy in each other and in the -child was, if that could be, deeper—the very shape -of fear gave an intensity, a lambent rose and purple, -a richer music—made it deeper. Their service to -the folk among whom they had fallen was no less.... -But they felt a threat and a haunting and a -movement of life from one house to another.</p> - -<p>At last, on a calm and glorious morning, they saw -the ship again—that ship and another. The two -lowered sail, down rattled the anchors; they swung -at ease in the still water beyond the fringing reef.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[375]</a></span> -Their flags were Spanish; they sent a shot from a -culverin shrieking across to the land. It sheared the -top of a palm tree; the green panache came tumbling -to the ground. Birds rose with clamour and fled -away; the shot echoed from a low hill back in the -island. Forth from the ships’ sides put boats—boat -after boat until there were a number—and all filled -with armed men.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[376]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER XXIX</h2> - -<p class="pch">THE SPANIARDS</p> - -<p class="pn1"><span class="smcap">The</span> slave-seekers, one hundred and fifty armed -men, struck a flag into the earth before the village -and demanded a parley. Their leader or captain was -a tall, black-bearded person, fierce and fell of voice -and aspect. He came to the front and shouted to the -Indians in a mixture of Spanish and Indian words. -Also he made friendly-seeming gestures. “No harm -meant—no harm meant! Friends—friends! Your -kindred send you messages—from a happy country—much -happier than here where you live! Let us -come into your village and talk.—We have beads -and scarlet cloth—”</p> - -<p>But the village kept silence. At Aderhold’s instigation, -immediately after the ship’s first visit, it had -digged around itself a shallow ditch and planted in -part a stockade of sharpened stakes, in part a tall -and thorny hedge. Within this manner of wall were -gathered some four hundred souls, counting men, -women, and children. Besides the infants and the -small boys and girls there were the old and infirm -and the sick. All were naked of other defence than -this one barrier and the frail, booth-like walls of -their huts. They were armed only with primitive<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[377]</a></span> -weapons. The word “Spaniard” meant to them -ogre and giant.</p> - -<p>If they were not truly ogres and giants, the slave-seekers -were yet active, hardened, picked men, -trained in cruelty, practised in wiles, fired with lust -of the golden price. When the village held silent, -the leader tried again with blandishments; when -there came no answer but the hot sunshine and the -murmur of wood and sea, the company lifted its -flag and advanced with deliberation. From behind -the wall came a flight of spears and arrows. A Spaniard -staggered and fell. Some savage arm, more sinewy -than most, had sent a spear full through his -neck. There arose a roar of anger. The men from -the ships, the black-bearded one at their head, -rushed forward, came tilt against the stockade and -the thorn hedge.... They had not believed in the -stoutness of any defence, nor of these Indians’ hearts. -But driven back, they must believe. Carrying with -them their wounded, they withdrew halfway to the -sea and held council.</p> - -<p>In the village they mended the gaps in the wall of -stakes and thorny growth, and that done, watched -and waited. The sun rode high, the children went -to sleep.... The old chief—the fighting men, the -women gathered around him—talked with high, -ironic passion of days gone by in this island, in this -island group. “They came, and our fathers’ fathers -thought they were gods or men like gods! They -had their wooden cross, and they planted it in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[378]</a></span> -sand, side by side with their flag that says ‘Slay!’ -They said that both were pleasing to the Great -Spirit, and that they were his favoured children. -They went away and our fathers’ fathers thought -of them as gods and their country as the house of -the Great Spirit.... They who had been children -when they came grew to be men. There were men -and men, then, in this land, men and men! Then -the Spaniards came again. They told our fathers -that they came from heavenly shores. They said -that there, would our fathers only go with them in -their many ships, they would find their dead again! -Find them living and bright and always young. -Find them they loved. Find their forefathers whom -the Great Spirit loved and kept always about him. -Find all they dreamed about. Find happiness.... -They were weak of mind and they believed! They -went into the Spaniards’ ships—hundreds and -hundreds and hundreds. Next year the Spaniards -came again and they brought what they said were -messages from the red men who had gone last year -to the heavenly shores. It was truly where the Great -Spirit dwelt and where the dead lived again and all -the red men who could should come.... And they -whose islands these were were weak in judgment and -listened and believed and went. The Spaniards carried -them away in their ships—men and men and -men and women and children. They loaded their -ships with them as though they were nuts or fruit -or fish they had caught, or the gold that they are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[379]</a></span> -always seeking. They carried them away, and next -year they came for more. They took these too. And -now this country was growing as it is to-day—trees -where once there were people. But at last one escaped -from the ‘heavenly shores,’ and after long -toil and suffering reached these islands and told -the truth. So at last when the Spaniards came the -people fought them. But they were strong and the -people were weak. And more and more trees grew -where once there had been men! Now”—said the -old chief—“I will tell you about those heavenly -shores, for I, too, have been there. I will tell you of -what we from this country do there, and what is -done to us.” He told, circumstantially, a tale of -fearful suffering.</p> - -<p>Many of the Indians, men and women alike, determined -to die rather than be taken. But many, -and perhaps the most, were neither strong nor stoic, -and there was a doubt, Aderhold and Joan felt, and -the old chief felt.... Neither that day nor that -night did there befall another attack. The Spaniards -camped upon the shore, but the watching village -saw boats go to and fro between the land and -the ships. The night was dark and they saw moving -lanterns. With the dawn one of the ships slowly -felt her way farther into the crooked channel; when -she anchored again she lay much nearer than before, -and her row of culverins grinned against the village. -Moreover, three lesser pieces had been dismounted -and brought ashore. In the night-time they had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[380]</a></span> -made a platform and mounted these falcons or -sakers.</p> - -<p>As the sun rushed up, they sent a broadside -against the wall and the huts beyond. The flame -and thunder terrified, the iron shot wrought havoc. -They sent another round, tore a great gap in the -hedge, then with a shout charged, the whole company, -across the open strip.... The bravest of the -village fought desperately, but the breach was made. -Many of the assailants were partly mailed. The Indians’ -weapons turned against steel headpieces and -backs and breasts. The Spaniards’ pikes and cutlasses -had advantage; their strength and ruthless -practice had advantage; their name, their face, their -voice carried terror to these forest people. Yet they -fought, the braver sort striking twice—for themselves -and for those whose joints were as water. The -old chief grew young again. His eyes breathed fire; -he fought and he cried his people on with a great, -chanting voice.... A turn in the confused struggle -brought the black-bearded Spaniard facing Aderhold -and Joan. “Mother of God! What’s here? -White skins leading these devils and fighting against -us? Flay you alive—”</p> - -<p>Men drove between. There was a great noise, a -panting heat, a rocking and swimming of all things -before the eyes. A crying arose. Unlooked for, -suddenly, there had been sent ashore from the -ships the final numbers of their crew and company. -Thirty fresh assailants poured with shouts and lifted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[381]</a></span> -weapons through the broken defences.... The -fearful among the Indians, and those who thought -slavery better than death, threw down whatever -weapons they bore and made gestures of submission -and entreaty. Others were overpowered. There -were many who could not fight—the sick, the infirm, -and aged, many children. The terror of these -and their wailings weakened the hearts of those who -did fight. Moreover, the Spaniards knew what to do. -They took a child and threw it from pike point to -pike point, and found Indian words in which to -threaten a like fate to every babe. The Indian -mothers cried out to fight no more.</p> - -<p>The slave-seekers came in mass against those who -yet struggled. They cut down the old chief, fighting -grimly; they ran him through the body with a pike -and slew him. Aderhold and Joan with others, men -and women, fought before a hut in which had been -placed a number of children. A Spaniard came -behind Aderhold and struck him down with a blow -upon the head. He lay for a minute stunned; when -his senses cleared all was over. All were beaten -down, cowed, disarmed. Hands would have seized -Joan. She fought them off, sprang into the hut -and caught up her child, then, with her in her arms, -came back to Aderhold’s side....</p> - -<p>The victors were accustomed to victory. The -fighting over, the business conducted itself according -to custom. This affair differed only from many -others in that there had been a resistance of unexpected<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[382]</a></span> -firmness. Victory had not been without hurt, -without, even, the loss of Spanish lives. Business, -reacting, conducted itself therefore with something -less of contemptuous and careless disregard of pain -inflicted and something more of vindictive willingness -to inflict it. The conquered were driven together -and stripped of every belonging which, by any -ingenuity, might be converted into a weapon either -against their masters or their own now wretched -lives. The black-bearded captain told off guards, -and beside pike and cutlass the lash appeared.... -The ships were to be furnished fruit and cassava -cakes and the casks filled with water. The already -slaves were set to the task. Graves must be dug for -the Spanish dead, and these the slaves dug. Their -own dead went unburied. The black-bearded man -walked in front of the rows of captives and with a -jerk of his thumb indicated the too badly wounded, -the sick who would not survive the voyage, the too -old. These they put away with sword or dagger or -pike thrust. The children were to go—healthy children -had value. At last he came to Aderhold and -Joan. He stood still before them, looked them up -and down, his beard bristling. “Spanish?” he said. -“No, no! I think not!—English, then? English—English—English! -How did you come here?”</p> - -<p>“Through shipwreck.”</p> - -<p>“You taught them to fight us. English—English—English! -Well, we shall see, English!—Are you -heretics?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[383]</a></span></p> - -<p>“If you mean are we of the English Church, we -are not of the English Church.”</p> - -<p>“English have no church. There is only one -church and religion. Are you of the Holy Catholic -Church and Religion?”</p> - -<p>“No.”</p> - -<p>“Then,” said the black-bearded man and spat -toward them, “I will take you as a present to those -who are.”</p> - -<p>He stood off and regarded them. Joan with the -child sat on the earth, in the hot sunlight. The -child’s terrified crying had hushed; in her mother’s -arms she had sobbed herself to sleep. She lay half -covered by Joan’s skirt, shadowed by her mother’s -bending breast and face. The Spaniard’s countenance -twisted until it was like a gargoyle’s for cruelty -and ungenial mirth. Without a word he stooped -and with one great slashing stroke of his dagger slew -the child....</p> - -<p>They bound Joan, and she lay at last, prostrate -upon the earth, her forehead touching the child’s -still feet. Aderhold sat beside the dead and the -living love.... Around was heat and glare, huge -suffering, brute indifference, brute triumph, life -brought low, life iron-shod trampling life, a battlefield -of instincts, a welter of emotions, tendencies in -impact, old and deep ideas opposed to ideas ... -and all with which he and Joan were ranged in time -and space,—their stream and current—here and -now, as often before and often to come, the loser,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[384]</a></span> -the loser drowning in defeat.... He felt the wide -cold, the check, the bitter diminishing, felt it impersonally -for the enormous current, the stream where -there were so many drops; then, because he was man, -felt it for this childish people, felt it, a bitter and -overwhelming tide, for himself and Joan. Woe—woe—there -was so much woe in living....</p> - -<p>All the rest of that day the enslaved brought food -and rolled casks of water for the ships. When night -came they were let to sleep, lying on the ground, -in a herd. Now and again through the darkness rose -a sharp cry of grief, or ran from one to another a -sobbing and groaning. But the most slept heavily, -without movement. Dawn came, and the slaves -were roused. They were permitted to eat a little -food—and then they were driven to the shore and -into the boats.... Their dead, their village, their -island were severed from them. They were left -naked to the beating of new tides....</p> - -<p>Joan and Aderhold were put upon the ship with -the darker sails—the ship that had come first to -the island. The hold of this ship was inexpressibly, -fearfully crowded with the enslaved. When the -hatches were closed, it was a black pit, a place of -gasping, fighting for breath. When morning came -the Spaniards, seeing that otherwise much of their -property would die and become no man’s property, -drew out several score and penned them in a narrow -space upon the deck. Aderhold and Joan were -brought forth with the others, driven here with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[385]</a></span> -them, pressed by the mass close against the ship’s -side.</p> - -<p>Day crept away, sunset came. The island where -they had dwelled was long fallen from sight. Out of -the sea before them, though as yet at some distance, -rose the shape of an outermost islet of this group. -When that should be passed, there would lie an -expanse of ocean, and, at last, driving south, would -rise the great island to which they were bound. The -sun dipped below the horizon, but over against it -rose the round and silver moon. By its light could -be seen the strengthening outline of the last island, -at length the very curve of surf, the beach and -sombre palms.</p> - -<p>Aderhold moved, touched Joan who sat as if in a -trance. About them many of the Indians had fallen -asleep or lay, beaten down to a half-consciousness. -At no great distance were the guards. But these -had no fear now of that cowed shipload, and so paid -little attention. Amidships and forward were Spaniards -enough, but these talked and swore or gamed -among themselves or gazed at the island without -lights by which they were slipping. Aderhold bent -and whispered in Joan’s ear. For a moment she -sat motionless; then slowly the mind returned and -became active, though through dark veils of woe.</p> - -<p>She nodded. “Yes, yes! Let us go! If we die we -may find her.”</p> - -<p>“Wait until that cloud is between us and the -moon.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[386]</a></span></p> - -<p>It came between and the ship and the decks darkened. -The two rose with caution to their feet. About -them were darkness, shadowy forms, blended sounds, -but no eye seemed to see what they were about, no -voice cried out an alarm. They were close to the -ship’s side—one other moment and they had -swung themselves up, leaped overboard.... They -touched the dark water, went under, rose, struck -out. In their ears rang no shout or sound of discovery. -The sucking and turmoil of the water about -them lessened. A fresh wind was blowing and the -ship sailed swiftly. She was no longer huge above -them, they came out of her shadow; she was seen at -a slight distance, then at a greater and a greater.... -They were free of her, free also of her consort, -the other ship. The wide ocean swept around.</p> - -<p>It swept around save where the island rose. It -rose not at all far away, a quiet and lonely strand. -A light surf broke upon its shore. Sometimes floating, -sometimes swimming, the two who would yet -have life gained toward it. They gained toward it -until at last they reached it, came out of the beating -surf, and lay with closed eyes and fluttering breath -upon the moonlight-coloured sand.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[387]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER XXX</h2> - -<p class="pch">THE ISLET</p> - -<p class="pn1"><span class="smcap">This</span> was a small island or cay. They found water -and they found fruit and cassava, and with these -and a shelter of boughs and leaves of the little palm -they raised again the flag of life....</p> - -<p>The death of the child. For a time that made of -existence a cruel buffet, a sore bruise. The parents -grieved. But time dealt with that grief—time -and inner strength. At length it diffused itself, adding -its own hue to many-tinted consciousness, its -own strain to life’s vast orchestration, but no longer -darkening and making to throb all moments of the -waking day. They had within them a coördinating, -harmonizing power, and sorrow brought its -own wealth and added to the whole.</p> - -<p>The outward activities of life narrowed, indeed, -upon this islet. But here also they took circumstance -and enlarged its bounds and deepened its -meaning. They brought will and intellect to bear -upon environment, moulded it as far as might be -and increased their havings. Here nor nowhere in -this universe could they be less than interested. -Flotsam upon this islet, yet here as elsewhere the -mind found food and field of action and through -small doorways passed into wide countries.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[388]</a></span></p> - -<p>Love burned clear, love of man and woman. It -kept its heyday. But beside it rose, higher and more -massive than in the peopled, busy island, other -ranges of the mind. The child’s death—and the -loss of the Indian village and of the old chief and the -recurring vision of that oppression and the inhumanity -of their kind—and the deep loneliness of this -place—all wrought upon them. Moreover, the -spring of inward growth was strong and constant. -Year by year, with Joan as with Aderhold, the spirit -travelled further in all its dimensions.</p> - -<p>The mind.... Here upon this span of earth the old -ache for knowledge, the old brooding and longing of -the mind came back to Aderhold, came more imperiously, -larger, wider-robed. This ball of earth and -the criss-cross of movement upon it. This sun and -the chain that held to it the ball of earth. What -was the chain? These stars and clouds of stars—this -sea of ether—light in waves.... Again, the -growth of plants—motion fluent as a stream. And -the life that dwelt in shells—that made its armour -and outgrew it.... Ceaseless change, transition,—kinds -linked by likeness to other kinds, kinds -growing out of other kinds, the trunk branching. -He thought that all kinds might have branched from -one or few, and the selfsame sap in all. He did not -believe in a myriad unconnected, arbitrary creations.... -But if the least leaf and tendril knew -motion, alteration, growth, then the sap, too, knew -it—the sap that was supposed to be so moveless, so<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[389]</a></span> -perfected.... Kin and kin again—one and one -again.</p> - -<p>As for Joan—her mind trod differing roads, -though with many a point of contact, many an inn -where she met him who travelled too. As of Heron’s -cottage her hands and head had wrought a bright -pastoral, an unfrayed and well-woven garment of -life—as in the peopled island she had with a larger -and a freer play, with a more creative and a nobler -touch, made life not an idyll only, but an idyll and -something more, so here she lived a nobler poem. -Her child’s death brought into it deeper tones, as of -an organ, as of violins. And as she had lit torches -for Aderhold, so had he lit torches for her. She -thought and imaged with a wider sweep than had -once been possible. She thought and imaged now -for the whole world; she dreamed light for all.</p> - -<p>To both the time upon this isle was a time of deepening -vision, of a crescent sense of inward freedom -and power. To a stranger’s chance-lighting eye they -would have seemed but two castaways, narrowly -environed, scantly living, lonely and lost, of necessity -wretched. They were not wretched, or lonely, -or lost.</p> - -<p>Months passed—the year—a great part of another -year. Then one day again they saw a sail.... -It was the beginning of the stormy season, and there -had been rough weather. To-day the sky was blue, -the air but gently moving, but there had been a gale -to drive ships and make wrecks. This ship had not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[390]</a></span> -been greatly hurt, but the winds had driven her out -of her course. Moreover, there had been leakage -among her water-casks. It was with joy that she -saw this islet lift upon the horizon. She made it, -found a large-enough harbour, between two horns of -coral rock and sand, and presently sent her longboat, -filled with seamen, to the shore. They rowed in cautiously, -keeping a good lookout, for, while it was but -an islet and looked desert, there might be Indians or -pirates or Spaniards. No harm showing, they made -a landing and came upon the shore.—It was now to -search for water.</p> - -<p>In the search they found a palm-thatched hut, -and, standing expectant before it, a white man and -woman.—“Who be you?” demanded the boatswain -in good Devon.</p> - -<p>The ship was the Eagle, sailing home from Virginia, -having brought out colonists and supplies. -Now it was taking home samples of native products, -two or three Indians for show, and not a few dissatisfied -adventurers, with others of a stouter make -who were bound with representations to the Company -or upon various upgathering missions.... Who -were the white man and woman? They were Giles -and Ellice Heme, shipwrecked here several years -ago. The captain, who presently came ashore, was -questioning them. From London? Aye, then! and -their ship? The Needs Must, sailing from port of -London. The captain rubbed his brows. He did not -remember the ship or the loss of her, but then more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[391]</a></span> -and more ships were going out, and he could not remember -all names or accidents. All lost? Giles and -Ellice Heme could not tell. They had escaped in a -small boat. Those with them had died.—Would -they be taken back to England?—The captain was a -bluff old sea-dog, literal-minded and not inquisitive. -He assumed that their tale was true in the main, -and he assumed that, of course, they wished to be -taken back to England. Otherwise, there would be -something wrong with them. He hardly waited for -an answer, but turned eyes and mind toward the -water-casks. He was in haste; he wished to up sail -and away while the sky was still without clouds.</p> - -<p>The two, left alone at last after all exclamation -and question, faced a decision—how momentous -an one made itself felt between them. They stood -in the brown light of their hut, the doorway framing -blue sea and sky and the Eagle, quivering to be -gone.</p> - -<p>Aderhold spoke. “If we refused to go, it is most -likely—it is certain, I think—that they would -force us with them. We should be thought mad—or -if not that, they would hold that we were not -simply castaways. They would take us still, and -from the first we should rest under suspicion.”</p> - -<p>“At any time the Spaniards may come again,” -said Joan; “then again horror ... death. Or some -other harm may come to one of us here—and the -other left alone. That is often in my mind, and I -know that it is often in yours.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[392]</a></span></p> - -<p>“If we reached England unsuspected—if we -could lose ourselves in London—”</p> - -<p>“Never could we go back to Hawthorn—nor to -the town!”</p> - -<p>“No.”</p> - -<p>“Six years.... Gilbert, would we not be safe -anywhere else?”</p> - -<p>“Ours are matters in which no one is safe who -thinks not as his neighbours. And say we slipped -silent and down-bent through life, giving no present -authority offence—yet at some corner comes one -who recognizes face or voice and recalls the past—’Ha, -you hide!’ And it is all to do again.... I do -not think we have any choice. I do not think this -captain will leave us here.... There have been -men who, under feigned names and away from the -place of blackest threatening, have lived long and -peacefully.... At first, until we were free of enquiries -and had found work by which we might live, -there would be thick danger.... We might escape.”</p> - -<p>“It is best to be with your kind.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, it is best. The world grows so.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, to see green grass and English flowers!... -But the child—the child! We would go farther -and farther from where the child lies.... I know -that we must go.”</p> - -<p>“Yes. She does not lie there. She does not stay -there.”</p> - -<p>“No—she is here—she is everywhere.... -Well, let us go bravely.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[393]</a></span></p> - -<p>Giles and Ellice Herne went aboard the Eagle. -Before sunset she had clapped on all sail and was -moving swiftly from that island. It faded, faded. -They lost the clump of palm trees marking the place -of their hut, lost the outline of the tiny harbour, -lost in the dusk the gleam of the beach and the white -crests of the incoming tide. The Eagle was a good -ship and a swift sailer. Back she came into her -course. The bird that was her figurehead looked -east, looked north, between it and its homing the -grey and rolling Atlantic. Now she had bad weather -and now she had good, but the good predominated.</p> - -<p>The ship was not crowded, as had been, six years -before, the Silver Queen. Moreover, those aboard -were preoccupied, the dissatisfied with their dissatisfaction, -the hardier, more patient or farseeing -sort, returning to England only to return thence to -their new world, with their papers of representation, -their arguments, and busy schemes. At first there -was curiosity as to the castaways and how they -had preserved life, alone, on that morsel of land. -That satisfied, attention turned in each on board -to his own matters, or to matters that seemed -cognate. The rescued were quiet folk who kept to -themselves; doubtless they were dazed by long privation -and loneliness, and by this unexpected salvation....</p> - -<p>Aboard were several women, the captain’s wife, -and one or two others of the bolder sort who would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[394]</a></span> -go with their husbands to whatever new worlds -might be discovered. These helped Joan to fitter -clothing than any she possessed. She came back to -Aderhold in a linsey kirtle and bodice, a small white -cap, and with a kerchief folded across her bosom. -“Hawthorn again,” she said with a sob in her -throat. He, too, had been given clothing. He was -dressed plainly, like a clerk. No one was by, the -soft dusk closing in. They stood for a moment and -within them rose the vivid shape of the past. They -smelled again the fern and mould of Hawthorn -Forest; they heard again the drone of the bees, the -singing of the stream past the fairy oak; they heard -again the distant church bells. Rose the great -image, grave and golden, of the six years past, rose -the vision of the child, rose old memories, tendernesses, -fears, rose forebodings, prophecies, realizations. -It was dusk, the wind making a low, sustained -music. They came to each other’s arms, they embraced -closely, straining each to each with passion. -They kissed, the tears stood in the eyes, fell -upon the cheeks of each. It was like a farewell, -and it was like a meeting....</p> - -<p>Upon the ship was a man neither young nor old, -who had come out to Virginia the year before, sent -by the Company upon some investigation. Now, -the work done, he was returning. He had a strong, -determined face, steady eyes and a close-shutting -mouth. On the day of their coming aboard, he with -others had approached Giles and Ellice Herne and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[395]</a></span> -asked them questions. They had been true questions; -he was interested in knowing how they got -upon that island, but preferred the detail of how -they had managed to live while there. After that, -with some frequency he sought them out and fell -into talk. The rest upon the ship were preoccupied -with the struggles and miseries and triumphs of the -Colony. To them it was growing to be home. But -the Company’s agent, his errand done, was returning -to England like Antæus to Mother Earth. He -must talk, and guided by some subtle principle of -choice, he talked to these people who also must be -homesick for England.</p> - -<p>The two strove to be guarded, spoke little themselves, -passed well enough for a quiet clerk or -scrivener or teacher and his wife whom the whimsical -fortunes of the time had made colonists, and -wind and wave and ill chance castaways on that -islet. Wisdom made them not too silent, not to -seem morosely so—nor too guarded, not to make it -evident that they were watching from behind barricades. -It was chiefly to Aderhold that he talked, -Joan sitting by, her hands clasped in her lap, her -eyes upon the sea, narrowing between them and -England. He talked, it seemed to Aderhold, with -boldness, but then the castaway gathered that upon -the issues that interested this man, men in England, -in six years’ time, had grown bolder.</p> - -<p>News from England! News of England when the -agent left England last year was the already two-years-old<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[396]</a></span> -news that the king meant to rule without -Parliaments. Perhaps when they landed in London -they might find newer news—perhaps the king, -wanting money very badly, had wanted it enough -at last to summon a Parliament. If that were so, the -agent of the Company hoped that certain men had -seats. He mentioned among others John Pym. -News! There was the news that the Bishops were -in the saddle. Episcopacy had been established in -Scotland. Timid and recreant ministers had gone -over, the patriotic were in hiding,—proscribed. -The people were at the mercy of the wolves—the -Crown’s wolves. In England just as bad—though -with a difference. The Established Church rode -high and kissed the hand of the king. “Passive -obedience!” It had got its shibboleth. “No power -in the people and disordered multitude.”—God’s -own hand having touched the forehead of kings! -“Did I not tell ye?” says the king; and with one -hand puts down the civil courts and with the other -lifts the ecclesiastical.</p> - -<p>News! The news from England was Despotism -that barked like Cerberus out of three mouths—King, -Bishops, and Favourites! The agent’s face -turned red and the veins in his forehead stood out, -so in earnest and angry was he. “News of England!” -he said, “is that slaves will be slaves and -free men will be free men! News of England is -that if things better not there will be battles!” He -swung round upon Aderhold. “I speak more plainly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[397]</a></span> -than I should! But if I can read men, your passion, -too, is for freedom!”</p> - -<p>“Aye,” said Aderhold, “I would be free.”</p> - -<p>Another time, when for some minutes they had -been watching the sea in silence, the determined-faced -man spoke with sudden energy. “Do you not -hold that the Presbyterian or Calvinist form of -religion and the rule of the people—such as are -landowners and tend neither to Popery on the one -hand nor to any manner of disbelief on the other—through -Parliaments duly chosen is the way of -God upon earth?”</p> - -<p>Aderhold kept silence, his eyes upon the moving -sea. When he spoke at last it was almost dreamily. -“The only way?... Do you?”</p> - -<p>Something in the fast-flowing field, the field that -was but the surface of depth, or in the mist-veiled -sky, or in the tone of the castaway, checked the -other’s reply. At last he said slowly, “It is right to -resist a king who would rule us beyond what the -sense of man allows.”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” said Aderhold, “that is right.”</p> - -<p>“That is what I care for,” said the agent; “that -is the way of God to me. The bishops go with the -king and preach tyranny, so the bishops are to be -fought too. He who wishes to be free surely will not -chain his will to the Pope’s throne. So what is there -left but Calvin—if you exclude these mad Independents -who spring up like mushrooms! At any -rate, in England to-day the men who oppose the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[398]</a></span> -king’s tyranny are like to smack of Edinburgh or -Geneva!”</p> - -<p>“In a manner I believe that to be true,” said -Aderhold. “Not yet do they wish freedom around -and around. But never will I deny that it is much -to begin to image freedom!”</p> - -<p>The ship sailed on through good and bad weather. -To the two castaways danger seemed to sleep. No -one troubled them on this ship, preoccupied with its -own affairs. The fact that they were seen with the -agent of the Company procured for them a certain -respect. The days slipped by, the weeks slipped by—pearl-grey -weeks, quiet, halcyon.</p> - -<p>There came a summer eve when, hand in hand, -Joan and Aderhold watched England rise from out -the sea. None was by. They stood long in silence; -then, “Do you remember,” said Joan in a low voice, -“how we ran through the castle wood with the great -moon on high? How we lay in that pit with the -branches over us while they that hunted us went by? -Do you remember the woman with the three daughters -who gave us bread and milk?”</p> - -<p>“I remember it all,” said Aderhold. “May we -come forth now as then!... The smell of the hay -there in the barn where we lay all day.... The -white road that first night from the prison and the -starry sky over the gallows tree.”</p> - -<p>“Over the gallows tree!”</p> - -<p>“Once I thought a thing like that the fearfullest -thing! Now, though I love life more now than I did<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[399]</a></span> -then, I do not think so. The old terrors grow smaller. -They will come one day, I think, to cause laughter.”</p> - -<p>“I understand that,” said Joan. “Nor do they -matter to me as they did. Neither the gallows tree, -nor words like witch and sorcerer, heretic and -atheist!”</p> - -<p>The shore before them grew in distinctness, grew -and grew as they stood there alone, withdrawn, -watching. With that increasing definiteness, that -rigour of line and hue and shape, came with a growing -form, a growing sharpness of menace, came as it -had not come to them before upon this ship, a realizing -knowledge that here there was no change; that -the hot ploughshares and the sharp swords were yet -ready laid for folk like them to move across! England -was England still.... They heard upon the -wind, “<i>Witch and Sorcerer—Witch and Sorcerer—doubly -damned for that you were judged and lay not -still under our judgement! Witch and Sorcerer.... -Fornicators—for in what church were read your marriage -banns, and what priest with lifted hands blessed -your union?... Blasphemers, deniers, atheists who -pray not to Jehovah! Witch and Sorcerer—Witch and -Sorcerer</i>—”</p> - -<p>They were not wholly free from fear and shrinking. -They looked at each other with whitened faces. But -they had said true when they had said that they -were freer. They recovered, they smiled into each -other’s eyes. “I wonder how much of us they will -hang or burn—”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[400]</a></span></p> - -<p>The shores grew plainer, higher. There came, suddenly, -a summons to the captain. They found him -in the great cabin, papers upon the table. Still short -of speech, incurious and literal, he now had duties -which he would perform. He had to give account to -the proper officers of the Eagle’s voyage and of those -whom she brought into England, and he proposed -not to lose sight of the castaways, Giles and Ellice -Herne, until the right authorities gave him quittance. -He could not remember the Needs Must, -but there were many who would. Any saved from -any lost ship had an importance, for they could give -to her owners information where had been guessing. -Therefore the captain meant to send the two ashore -with a trusted man who would take them before -such and such persons in authority. There they -would be questioned, and if they answered to satisfaction -would doubtless be helped. The captain, -with a wave of his hand dismissing them, turned to -other business. He left a sharp enough thorn of -anxiety with the two who had fled England on the -Silver Queen.</p> - -<p>Night passed. Morning broke—English summer, -soft and sweet. Here was the Thames mouth, here -other winged ships and ships at anchor, here the -green shores, the waving trees, the clustered houses, -here England—England!</p> - -<p>As they stood watching with full hearts the agent -of the Company came to them from the poop deck. -“You have no money?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[401]</a></span></p> - -<p>“No.”</p> - -<p>“Have you friends in London?”</p> - -<p>“No.”</p> - -<p>He held out to Aderhold a woolen purse, open, -showing two gold nobles and some silver pieces. -“Yes, take it—and no need for thanks! I have gotten -good from you.—You will want work?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“I have weight enough with the Company to get -you a clerkship.”</p> - -<p>Aderhold thanked him again, and with warmth of -feeling, but shook his head. He had plans, he said.—But -when the agent was gone the two smiled at -each other. Gold and plans!... They had had -plans—they had planned. What they had planned -was to lose themselves, immediately upon leaving -the ship, in the crowd which doubtless would gather -at the waterside, then to slip into some street or -lane and begone. Somewhere in the tangled heart of -London, in some poor street, in some garret, they -might find a lodging. Then work to live by.... -There had risen a vision, not unhomely, comforting, -hopeful—physician’s work among the poor and -obscure, sempstress or spinster’s work, quiet life in -the shadow but with gleams of sun.... But now -the plans seemed hardly even gossamer.</p> - -<p>The Eagle came slowly into port. Aboard was -bustle and confusion. With the rattling down of her -anchor appeared the small boats, the wherries, -clamouring to take all ashore. A barge brought port<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[402]</a></span> -officers. These came up the side.... All was well, -all might go ashore. The agent of the Company -would go, it seemed, in the port barge. Giles and -Ellice Herne watched him leave the ship. He had -been a friend; they felt gratitude and liking; they -watched the dwindling boat and thought it doubtful -if, in this round of life, they would ever see the agent -again....</p> - -<p>Their time came—they were to go with the -second mate, a broad-shouldered, surly, watchful -man.</p> - -<p>The catch into which they stepped was crowded -with the lesser sort of the Eagle’s passengers. Here -were the dissatisfied, returning folk, and here with -their exploiter were the Indians brought for show. -Aderhold, looking at them, had a fleeting thought -of a booth, paused before on a morning when he -had set out northward from London, years ago.... -Shipping loomed about them, Thames side before -them. The high, narrow houses, the roofs, the windows, -the roaring streets, the throng about the water -steps, pushing and jostling for a sight of the disembarking—talking -and shouting, people greeting -and being greeted, a swarm and distraction! Joan -sat elbow on knee, hand pressed against lips, her -eyes wide, and, as far as Thames side was concerned, -unseeing. What else she saw she did not say, -but her face had a soft and brooding look.... The -catch made its landing. Joan and Aderhold, placed -in the stern, were the last to come out upon the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[403]</a></span> -water stairs. Before them the second mate shouldered -his way. About them was the English crowd, -beneath their feet soil of England. Home—home—home -where they were born!</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[404]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER XXXI</h2> - -<p class="pch">THE HOUR-GLASS</p> - -<p class="pn1"><span class="smcap">They</span> were moving with the second mate through a -busy street, toward a harsh old pile of buildings. -The mate was a watchful man. To start aside from -him into some court or lane or other street, to elude -him and vanish, was from the start a clearly hopeless -thing. Did they try it he would raise a hue and cry. -They went with him in silence, watching Fate to see -what she would do.</p> - -<p>The street was narrow, the houses dark, and high, -with overhanging storeys, with swinging signs. -Above showed only one pale stripe of sky. There -were booths and shops, with an occasional stentor -crying of “What d’ye lack?—What d’ye lack?” -Many people went up and down—type after type -that Aderhold recalled. The years since he had been -in London had made no great difference. He thought -that he discerned more party men—in many a -greater stiffness of bearing, a darker hue and plainer -cut in apparel. The chance words and phrases -caught in passing had an interest....</p> - -<p>In old, old days there had come to him at times -of crisis, a detachment, an awareness of impersonality, -a perception that, actor here, he was no less -spectator of his action, safe in further space and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[405]</a></span> -time. The perception returned, and came with -greater strength than ever before, and with it, too, -an old sense of deepening light. He turned his face -toward Joan beside him.... She was gazing upon -London town, her grey eyes calm and bright, her lips -parted, rose colour in her cheeks. In a manner she -looked as young, as free from care and danger as -when, on a holiday, Joan Heron had come with her -father from the huntsman’s house in the castle wood -and had strolled here and there and to and fro in the -town six miles from Hawthorn. She looked as young -and like a girl, and yet the next moment there moved -beside him the woman, the mind and soul that had -grown. But the calmness held, the bright stillness, -the manner of radiance. She put out her hand and -touched Aderhold’s. “Do you feel it?—I felt only -fear this morning, but now, somehow, I do not believe -that I shall ever feel fear again. The things -that were so great have become little.”</p> - -<p>The early morning had been clear, but the sky, -overcast when they left the Eagle, was now darkening -rapidly. There came a silver dash of rain, increasing -to a downpour. With slanted bodies and -bent heads men and women hastened to shelter. -Some hurried on to destinations not so far away; -others, with farther to go, took present refuge under -overhanging eaves or in doorways. The rain fell with -a steady, rushing sound; the gutters began to fill -and overflow; the air grew dark and still. “Stand -by,” said the mate, “until the cloud empties!” The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[406]</a></span> -three stepped under the cover of an antique porch, -so jutting from the building of which it made a part -that the street had been forced to bend. Others were -here before them, perhaps a dozen in all. Some were -citizens, three or four country or small town people, -viewing the sights of London. These had with them -for guide and showman some city friend.</p> - -<p>The latter was speaking with distinctness, in a -cheerful and complacent voice. “This was one of the -old religious houses. Over yonder used to be a field -where in Queen Mary’s time they burned people.”</p> - -<p>The country folk looked with interest, not at the -old religious house, but at the row of small buildings -where once had been the field.</p> - -<p>One spoke. “Did you ever see a man or woman -burned?”</p> - -<p>“No,” said the citizen. “It’s dying out. They -mostly hang people now.”</p> - -<p>A man in a sad-coloured dress spoke with an -abrupt, harsh voice. “There are sins that you -should burn for. I believe not in your weak mercy. -What is good enough for God on High is good enough -for me. He burns sinners. If you do not believe in -burning sinners, you do not believe in God as shown -forth in his written Word.”</p> - -<p>“I think witches should be burned,” said the citizen.</p> - -<p>The first country speaker put in his word again. -“I saw one burned once when I was a young man! -She was a tall, fair wench, and when the flames went<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[407]</a></span> -up around her she cried out only one thing to the -crowd of us watching. She cried it thrice. ‘When -you feel fire, feel what you have believed!’”</p> - -<p>“What did she mean?” asked the citizen.</p> - -<p>“I do not know,” answered the countryman. -“There’s been an outbreak of witches this summer! -They’re getting very bold in the North. If you hear -of one, the next day you hear of another. For one -thing, as soon as there’s known to be a witch abroad, -people are on the lookout—”</p> - -<p>The downpour of rain had lessened into a shower.</p> - -<p>“Make sail!” said the mate.</p> - -<p>Leaving the porch, the three from the Eagle -moved on up the narrow street between the rain-washed -houses. They were now at no great distance -from their destination. As they walked the -two tried to hear the questions that would be put to -them and to frame answers.... But it was difficult, -difficult. In both the impulse that was gathering -strength, that was, as they both now began to perceive, -the destined conqueror, was the impulse still -to serve the truth. They were not fanatic, and they -loved life. But side by side with the recognition that -hardly, hardly could they escape, that they would -have to make a tissue of statements that could and -in all human likelihood would be disproved, streamed -stronger and stronger the distaste for that web of -misstatement, the liking for a plain relation of their -being and its acts. They were conscious of no ecstasy, -no hot, martyr enthusiasm, but direction was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[408]</a></span> -taken. With that deep inward movement came to -each a feeling of strengthened personality, of unison, -harmony....</p> - -<p>The wet and glistening street, the houses, the -roofs, the sky, the people passing up and down,—the -windows, the signs—Before them they saw a -swinging tavern sign, painted and cut in the shape -of a great hourglass. The tavern had a wide window, -overhanging the street, and in the window, as -the three from the Eagle came in line with it, appeared -the ruddy, determined face of the agent of -the Company. He looked out upon the street from -which the rain had in great part driven the people; -saw and hailed his fellow voyagers.</p> - -<p>“Well met, good folk! Whither away—”</p> - -<p>The second mate told the port to which they were -making. The man in the window was a person of importance -to the Eagle and its seamen. The mate -spoke with deference, and was ready to listen when -the agent proposed that he and the two shipwrecked -folk enter the Hour-Glass and drink a cup of wine. -He knew that the agent had seemed to have a liking -for the castaways—and they were not precisely folk -under suspicion, but only to be, as it were, certified -for. The agent spoke again with a touch of authority, -and the mate said, “Very good, sir, and thank -you kindly! A few minutes won’t matter.”</p> - -<p>The determined-faced man had the inn’s best -room and had it to himself. He welcomed into it -Giles and Ellice Herne, but left the mate in the common<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[409]</a></span> -room with the host and a command for what he -pleased to drink.</p> - -<p>The mate spoke again. “I’m ordered, sir, not to -let the shipwrecked people out of my sight.”</p> - -<p>“If you stay where you are you will see them still,” -said the agent. “There is but one door to this room, -and I leave it open.”</p> - -<p>The room had a sanded floor, a table, and benches. -Outside the clouds were parting, and now a stormy -sunlight broke through the window. The street -began again to fill with people and their voices -came confusedly into the room. A drawer brought -wine.</p> - -<p>“I frequent this inn,” said the agent. “Moreover, -by good luck, I find that a man whom I greatly desire -to see is in London and sleeps here at the Hour-Glass. -I await him now, and in the mean time lack -entertainment.—I was glad to see you coming up -the street.” He poured wine. “Here’s to the Eagle -and freedom!—Has England changed to your -eyes?”</p> - -<p>“Yes and no,” said Aderhold.</p> - -<p>Bow bells were ringing. The sunlight suddenly -flooded the room. Without the door the mate’s -rumbling voice was heard. “Two castaways—”</p> - -<p>“I have been gone a year,” said the agent. “The -man that I am looking for is a coming man in England, -and I expect to learn from him—”</p> - -<p>The agent and Aderhold were standing by the -table, but Joan had seated herself where through the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[410]</a></span> -open casement she could see the clearing sky. The -movement brought her into the shaft of light. It -bathed, it etherealized face and form. She looked -an immortal.... Placed so, she came first before the -eye when the man, whose step was now heard without, -swung the door wider and entered the room.</p> - -<p>The agent started from the table. “Ha, Harry -Carthew! I looked to find you—”</p> - -<p>But Carthew had neither eye nor ear for the returned -acquaintance and fellow-resister of the King. -Harry Carthew stood like a man turned to stone.... -Six years alone could not have made him look so -much older. He looked much older—a stern and -worn man, with a grim mouth and eyes where enthusiasm -now burned bright and now sank among the -embers of itself. He was dressed much as he used to -dress. It was the face and figure of the man who had -come to Heron’s cottage, but there had been a long -warfare in the nature and some degree of change. He -stood starkly silent, with a great, arrested look, as if -the very elements of his being stood still.... Joan, -rising, passed from the beam of light into the shadow -by Aderhold. They stood side by side, hand touching -hand. With a final crash and clangour the bells -stopped ringing.</p> - -<p>“What is it?” demanded the agent. “You know -these people—”</p> - -<p>Carthew moistened his lips. They parted, but at -first there came forth only an uncertain and broken -sound. Then,—“You were long sought. But when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[411]</a></span> -the Silver Queen came back from Virginia we learned -that you had escaped upon her, but had been thrown -from her for what you were, and were dead. Years -ago ... and you stand there....”</p> - -<p>The mate of the Eagle came to the door. “Sir, -may we be going now?”</p> - -<p>The agent crossed to him. “Not yet. Wait a -little, there without—” A voice spoke from behind -the mate. “I am with Master Carthew. I may -enter, sir?”</p> - -<p>The agent turned back into the room, and with -him came a slight man with a steeple-crowned hat -and a Geneva cloak. Joan and Aderhold faced -Master Thomas Clement.</p> - -<p>At last there came from the minister’s lips, -“Thou witch! Thou atheist and sorcerer!”</p> - -<p>The agent of the Company struck his hand against -the table. “Who are these?”</p> - -<p>Harry Carthew turned and walked stiffly to the -window-seat. When he reached it he sank down, -rested his locked arms against the sill, and his forehead -upon his arms. But Master Clement was of -more iron make. His long forefinger shot out toward -the two; he raised his arms, the black cloak falling -away from them, his small figure dilated; he shook -his lean and nervous hands; his voice, beginning on a -low tone, grew shrill and rapid; his eyes burned. -Zeal for the honour of his God had him.</p> - -<p>“Who are they? Scorners of God and deniers of -Revelation! Yoke-fellows with Satan and blaspheming<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[412]</a></span> -workers and doers of evil! Who are they? -Breakers forth from prison and just doom—cheaters -of stake and gallows—froth of hell! Who are -they? Say not that you have forgotten the -Hawthorn trials!”</p> - -<p>“The Hawthorn trials!”</p> - -<p>“Who in England heard not of them? Of the -wicked certain ones were hanged, but there broke -gaol and escaped the unbeliever and sorcerer Gilbert -Aderhold and the witch Joan Heron!” He stretched -his arms higher, he shook his hands more vehemently. -“But God for his glory,” he said, “bringeth -them back!”</p> - -<p>Aderhold and Joan stood straight and silent. The -shock of the encounter had driven the colour from -cheek and lip, but there was no other sign of cowing. -They knew now that they were in the arms of death. -The knowledge did not frighten. This very day they -had taken their direction—they were moving now -as they had determined.... The agent leaned -against the table, pale and staring.</p> - -<p>Aderhold turned and spoke to him. “Our names -are Joan Heron and Gilbert Aderhold. We are not -witch and sorcerer—nor yoke-fellows with Satan—nor -blasphemers of good. But we were judged -by our neighbours and by the law to be such, and -we were condemned to death and put in prison. By -the help of a gaoler who is dead we escaped. We -managed to stow ourselves upon the Silver Queen. -In the seas near the island where the Eagle found us,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[413]</a></span> -our names were discovered and the Silver Queen -cast us adrift. By this fortune and by that we came -first to a larger island and then to the islet from -which the Eagle took us. That, so far as is needful -to tell you, is our story. You have been good to us, -knowing only what we showed. If you will believe, -what we showed was ourselves.”</p> - -<p>Joan’s voice, a rich, clear, low voice, followed his. -“I am no witch, and he is no sorcerer. I was a country -girl and he a physician who helped many. Now -we are a man and woman who fare forward, wishing -no ill to any.”</p> - -<p>As she spoke she moved, unconsciously, a step -nearer to the table. The agent of the Company -recoiled, put out his hand against her closer approach. -In his face was a white horror. He remembered -the Hawthorn witch trial. That year he had -chanced to be in company with the elder Carthew, -and no detail but had been given him. The very -words of a ballad made upon the witch Joan Heron -came into mind—forgotten, he might have thought, -long since, but now flashing out in letters of fire—hell -fire. It had been a ballad sold and bought -throughout England, and it spared no strange assertion, -nor none that was gross. <i>The Witch Joan Heron.</i> -The ballad rang in his ears. He saw its title. THE -ABHORRED WITCH; or, THE MONSTROUS -LIFE OF JOAN HERON.... A look of sickness -passed over the agent’s face, no longer ruddy. He put -his arm above his eyes. “Avaunt, witch!” he said.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[414]</a></span></p> - -<p>Joan stepped back. Her eyes sought Aderhold’s. -He bent toward her, took her hands. She smiled -and said in the Indian tongue they had learned upon -that island. “Heart of my heart! The great sea is -cold at first—”</p> - -<p>“Hark!” cried Master Clement. “She speaks the -tongue she learned of Apollyon!”</p> - -<p>Harry Carthew rose from the window-seat. His -face was yet without colour, drawn and sunken, grim -and set. For the most part, with an iron effort, he -kept his voice under control, but now it broke and -sank and now it took a cadence of pain and horror. -He leaned against the wall for support, and once or -twice he lifted his eyes to where, in his thought, -there sat God whom he had angered. “Master -Clement, and my friend here,” he said, “God knows -I cannot doubt that this man is a sorcerer and this -woman a witch! In his Bible God tells us that there -are such and commands that they be done to death. -Moreover, from old time, wise judges and men of -law and knowledge, and devout and holy preachers -of the Word have showed us how these wicked -abound! As for these two, all manner of witness was -brought against them, and proof irrefragable. Yea, -and those who were hanged confessed that these -two kept by day and by night companionship with -Satan and did monstrous wickednesses. And that -the man is an apostate and blasphemer, an atheist -worthy of death, has been proved—nay, he himself -denied nothing in that sort. All that, and the doom<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[415]</a></span> -pronounced against them, in this world and in the -next, stands for true and lasting, and I have no -part in it, and there the shadow comes not against -me.... But there is a sin upon my soul, and God -gives me no rest until I tell it—” He wheeled -toward Master Clement. “I will tell it here and -now, and appoint me a day and I will tell it in open -church—So may offended God pardon me!”</p> - -<p>“Harry Carthew! Harry Carthew!” cried Master -Clement. “Every man alive has sin against his soul! -The soul of every man alive is black as midnight, -and no dawn cometh to it save from one that is not -himself! Unless and save the dayspring chooseth to -shine upon that soul, it resteth black and lost—it -hath in itself no power of motion and light! But -God hath elected thee, Harry Carthew! But this -man and woman are of the deep gulf of hell, predestined -and damned of eternity! What have you to -do with them, my brother, my son—for Christ -knoweth I love thee as a son—”</p> - -<p>“What had I to do with them?” said Carthew. -“I will tell you! At the trial in the town I gave evidence -that he struck me in the side with a dagger -that eve upon his road to prison. I lied. Sorcerer -and atheist though he be, he told truth when he said -that he did not so. And witch though she be, this -woman told truth when there in the court she cried -out against me. She told truth when she cried that -that night I had come to her cottage to tempt her -and that she struck me with a hunting-knife....<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[416]</a></span> -What was I? I was a young man, mad for a fair -woman—fair as her mother Eve who sinned before -her! What was I? I was a man desirous to increase -in name and fame, desirous of leadership—who -therefore must not let men view his sin! But it was -sin, and I know not if there be a greater—”</p> - -<p>If he began as to a more general audience, he -ended with a haggard-eyed appeal to Master Clement.... -The minister’s frame trembled; with a pale -and scared face he fronted Harry Carthew whom -he truly loved. “Harry Carthew! Harry Carthew! -Pray to God—”</p> - -<p>“I pray,” said Carthew. “Night and day, I -wrestle in prayer. I thought that He had answered -and given me peace in service. The moment I -ceased to serve and to act for this England, that -moment Gehenna opened in my soul.... But now -I see that He wanteth open confession.” He turned -upon the two where they stood beyond the shaft of -light. “Joan Heron, I wronged you,—and Gilbert -Aderhold, I wronged you,—and that I must say, -though you be the Fiend’s own! I must say it, -though I stood in heaven and looked across the gulf -upon you in hell—” He sank upon a bench by -the table and flung his clasped hands above his -head. “God, God! Grant me but to save my soul -alive!”</p> - -<p>Silence held in the room at the Hour-Glass. The -agent of the Company leaned against the table, -white and shaken. Master Clement came to Carthew,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[417]</a></span> -put his hand on his shoulder, and spoke in a -trembling voice. “A great sin verily, and greatly -to be repented.... But not the great sin, Harry -Carthew—not the Unpardonable Sin.... God -will have mercy. He will forgive. Have you not -served Him well, and will you not do so, ever the -more zealously? And will you not forever more -guard your ways, that you fall not again into the -pit? I trow that you will! Harry Carthew—Harry -Carthew, we will pray together! You are too valuable—This -very night I will come, and on our -knees we will wrestle with Him as did Jacob of -old—”</p> - -<p>Joan and Aderhold stood hand in hand. What -now they felt and thought was simple and whole. -This room with its occupants seemed not to have -over-greatly to do with them—it had widened out—they -felt a larger world.... It was as though -these old quarrels were childish concerns and fears -and quarrels—small, intense, unknowing things—childish, -pitiful. They felt them so, and yet they -did not feel old, they felt young....</p> - -<p>Aderhold spoke, again to the agent of the Company. -“Knowing nothing of our story, save that we -were shipwrecked folk, you showed us much kindness. -It does not hurt to take the thanks of shipwrecked -folk. Believe that we are grateful for -that kindness. This is to end, we know, in giving us -into the hands of the law. Then let them call those -who will take us.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[418]</a></span></p> - -<p>Carthew rose from the seat where he had thrown -himself. What wild emotion had possessed and -actuated him was driven to cover and stillness. His -face was grey, but set and grim with no softening -in its lines. He would have said that softening were -further sin. Out like a burned candle had gone long -since his passion for Joan Heron that had never been -high love.</p> - -<p>His eyes met those of Master Clement, “Aye,” -he said, “end it!”</p> - -<p>Master Clement nodded, turned, and left the -room.</p> - -<p>There was, it seemed, no great distance to send, -and those sent for were not long in coming. Without -the Hour-Glass it was now bright afternoon and -many people going up and down. Whenever and -wherever watch or ward was summoned the act of -its summoning was apt immediately to become -known. It was so here and now, and a crowd began -to gather before the Hour-Glass. How there started -a whisper of heinous crime, of escaped and retaken -caitiffs, it were hard to say. Perhaps the host or the -now staring and greatly excited mate of the Eagle -had heard somewhat and had repeated what he had -heard. But there started a murmur which grew to a -buzzing sound and threatened to become clamour. -“What was done?—Who is it? Ho, there, Hour-Glass! -What happened?” The law appeared—half -a dozen burly armed men with an officer at their -head. “Within the Hour-Glass! Let us pass, good<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[419]</a></span> -people, let us pass!” They entered the tavern. -Outside the crowd and the noise grew. “Traitors?” -cried one, and another, “Poisoners?” but a third, -“I can see through the window. It’s a woman—<i>Witch! -Witch!</i>”</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[420]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER XXXII</h2> - -<p class="pch">A JOURNEY</p> - -<p class="pn1"><span class="smcap">They</span> lay for a month in prison in London. Then, -all procedures having been met, the law would -return them to the county where they had offended -and the gaol from which they had broken and the -gallows field which had waited six years.</p> - -<p>They rode from London in company of a sheriff and -a dozen horsemen, and they went by the road which -Aderhold had travelled years before. He recognised -this place and that. Where the ways were bad—and -they were often bad—they dismounted and -went afoot. So many were with them and so no danger -at all was there of escape, that they were left -unshackled, were even let to draw a little to themselves. -At first the guard was rough of tongue, ready -with frequent, unneeded commands, ready with -coarse gibes. But the two answered quietly, or were -silent without sullenness, and there was something -in them that gave check.... At last the men conveyed -them without insult, without much further -speech to them direct. At night, when they came to -town or village, they were lodged in the gaol. When -they passed where there were people, and if it became -known what manner of felons were here, they -met with savage jeers and execrations. Sometimes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[421]</a></span> -mud was thrown, sometimes flints. But it was not -the guard’s cue to tell names and offence—and England -was not as populous then as now—and there -were long miles of lonely peace. To Joan and Aderhold -they seemed at times miles of a beautiful, a -sunny peace. They knew how to talk together with -few words, with a glance of the eye. And there were -many times when, some space allowed them and the -guards talking among themselves, the road became -as it were their own. Then they spoke freely, though -with low voices.</p> - -<p>It was late summer, with autumn well in view -upon the slope of the year. The landscape was growing -russet, and none the less fair for that. And it -was England—England after the blue plains of the -sea and the low, coral isles. And it was country and -pure air after the fetid London prison. And it was -the land where they were born—it was home, seen -after years away. These green fields and spreading -trees—this English sky—these birds and flowers -and crystal streams—these were no foes of theirs. -These had never cast them out. Here as elsewhere, -the great round earth had its own orthodoxy, but -took scant heed of man’s.... They saw England -after long absence; and for all that they were to be -slain here, they could find it beautiful, and for all -that they knew where ended this road, they played -with the happenings upon it.</p> - -<p>Twenty miles out from London the sheriff’s horse -cast a shoe, and at the next smithy all must halt<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[422]</a></span> -until Grey Dick was shod. The smithy stood in the -pleasant shadow of an oak so great that it must -have been growing when the Conqueror came over. -The hot smithy fire glowed within, iron struck -rhythmically against iron. Beyond the tree was a -well, and all were thirsty. They had not drawn -bridle for several hours. The men dismounted—the -two prisoners were given leave to do likewise, -even to rest upon the earth beneath the oak.</p> - -<p>The four children of the smith sat upon a log and -watched with an intensity of interest horses and -men and all their movements, and the man and -woman half sitting, half lying beneath the oak. The -smithy dog came up to these two, snuffed around -them, and then lay down at their feet. <i>Clink! -Clink!</i> and the trees began to wave in an afternoon -breeze, and the voices of the men about the well and -the smithy door sounded cheerful and hardy. The -two had no misliking for the bright world. They -sat watching the children.... The youngest child, -a yellow-haired mite of three, would make an -excursion of its own from the log, past the oak, to -the door. In the course of the journey it came upon -a protruding root, stumbled over it and fell. Joan -sprang forward and lifted it to its feet. “There, -there! You’re not hurt—Look at the pretty flower -you fell against!” The child decided not to cry, -laughed instead. Joan’s arm curved about the sturdy -small form and pressed it to her. “Ah, what a good -baby!”—The child was willing to stay and play,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[423]</a></span> -but with suddenness found herself released, given a -gentle push back toward the three upon the log. -Joan took her seat again upon the turf. “It wasn’t -wise to touch her. It’s strange that it should be so, -but if any saw they might bring it against her when -she is grown.”</p> - -<p>She spoke without any pain for herself in her -voice, but with yearning and tenderness for the -child. “Now she’s there and happy! She’s got a -stick to play with.”</p> - -<p>“Joan, Joan!” said Aderhold. “There will come -a day—”</p> - -<p>The horse was shod, the well-water drunk, guard -and prisoners took again the road. The smith and -his man had, at the last, their curiosity satisfied. -“Witches and wizards!—Nay, if I had known -that—”</p> - -<p>The road presented its stream, here full, here very -thin, of autumn travel. Little pictures and the -whole picture had a clear, a vivid interest. Market -people went by, drovers with cattle, sturdy beggars, -children, country girls and swains, carters and their -carts, mounted travel of merchants or justices or -churchmen or country gentlemen. The mounted -travel would always, authoritatively, have its curiosity -gratified. “A ward with prisoners!—Who are -your prisoners, sheriff?” The second morning it was -a party of young gallants who would know this. -They wore feathered hats, fine riding-clothes, boots -of soft leather, their hair somewhat long and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[424]</a></span> -curled. They were for King and Church—would -all live, perhaps, to fight on that side. “Prisoners! -What are your prisoners, sirrah!” Then, when they -knew,—“Witch! Witch! A young witch, too! -Let’s see her—Zounds! Who’s the man?... The -Hawthorn two who fled! <i>Gilbert Aderhold—Joan -Heron!</i>” Certain of these gallants had been in -London and knew of the recapture. It had been -common talk. The king had learned of it. “Joan -Heron!—Joan Heron! Let’s see—let’s see! Grey -eyes—gold hair—no, hair like bronze, pale -bronze.... Would you dare to kiss a witch?”—“No!”—“Yes!”—“No!”—“Yes, -I would!”—“To -make the Devil jealous—that were a parlous -thing!”—“Parlous or not, if she hath grey eyes -and red lips—”—“Kiss her—clip her in thy -arms and to-night she will come as <i>succuba</i> and kiss -and clip thee! Then hark to thy roar, ‘Avaunt, thou -hag! Will none save me from the foul fiend?’”—“Joan -Heron! Rememberest the ballad, THE -DEVIL AND JOAN HERON?”—“But thou’rt -not called ‘Daredevil’ for naught!”—“Do you -dare me?”—“Yes, yes! We dare you!”—“Kiss -her hard, clip her fast—No, no. Master Sheriff! -Fair play—make a ring!... Now! Now!”... -“<i>Well, thou hast courage!</i>”... “<i>She did not struggle,—as -do honest women or those who would be -thought honest!</i>” “To-night, to-night, when thou -hast put out the light, look to find her!”—“Ha, -ha! ha, ha! JOAN HERON—”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[425]</a></span></p> - -<p>They won away from those of the feathered hats. -Space widened between the two cavalcades, the -voices of the gallants died from the ear. The road -lay bright and sunny, the morning air blew fresh and -sweet. The great earth swept calm to the horizon, -the sky sprang, a pure and cloudless arch. For a -long way the road ran lonely of travellers other than -the sheriff, his men, and the prisoners. Joan and -Aderhold, riding together, talked in low tones. -After a time they were passing through a forest. -They loved the brown earth and the bracken, the -boughs overhead, the purple distances.</p> - -<p>“I remember this wood,” said Aderhold. “I lay -and rested under these trees and wondered what was -before me.... And I could not see <i>thee</i>.—I did -not know the lovely thing that was before me.”</p> - -<p>“And that night, at home, I slept and dreamed—and -saw not thee.”</p> - -<p>“There are glories in our lives. With every pain -and sorrow counted in, we have not been unhappy.”</p> - -<p>“No. Pain did not win. And the light was -brighter yesterday than the day before, and brighter -to-day than yesterday.... Look at the bird flying -up!”</p> - -<p>The third night the troop did not arrive, in time -for rest, at any town or village. A heavy rain had -fallen and delayed progress. They came at dark -to three or four mean houses, clustered around one -of better proportions, an inn by the sign just made -out through the dusk and the autumn mists. There<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[426]</a></span> -was not much to eat, but it might be made to do—straw -could be shaken down—there was a great -fireplace where blazing warmth might be had.... -To Joan and Aderhold, accustomed to the sun, good -was this warmth! There was one great stone-flagged -room, large as a baron’s hall. When the -dozen men of their guard disposed themselves, there -was yet space where the ruddy glow might reach -them, dry their clothing wet with the rain, warm -their bodies. Where there was not overmuch for any, -their portion of supper was small, indeed, but it -sufficed. When all would sleep, lying about the fire -upon the straw which the inn’s servitors brought in, -the two were thrust to a corner at the far end of the -place, farthest from the door. A watch was set—a -stanch man relieved each two hours by another. -The sheriff meant no slipping of the wizard and -witch out of his fingers. But sleeping time was not -yet come. The two sat to one side, watched, but no -more closely than was thought necessary.</p> - -<p>Beside the sheriff and his men there were the host -and hostess, three or four uncouth serving-men and -maids, and one other traveller, belated like the rest. -This was a gentle-faced old man, the parson, it was -learned, of a parish a dozen miles away.... The -night before, in a town of fair size, the names of his -prisoners becoming known, the sheriff had had -trouble to rescue them from the mob that gathered. -This day, therefore, he would keep secret the full -heinousness of the pair—along the way and here it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[427]</a></span> -was said only that they were a man and woman -accused of witchcraft and apostasy, being transferred -from one gaol to another.</p> - -<p>Under this description the inn folk looked aside at -them with great curiosity and fear. At supper time -none could be found willing to carry to them from -the kitchen their bit of coarse bread and pitcher of -water. The host was busied elsewhere; the hostess -put down her foot that she would not; the men and -maids laughed vacantly and stared, but would not -budge in that direction. The old man, the parson, -who chanced to be by, uttered a word of gentle -chiding, then, as all still hung back, himself picked -up the bread and water and carried them to the two. -They thanked him. He stood looking at them with -a gentle, pained face. Called to supper at the long -table where the sheriff and his men were noisily taking -places, he went away. But presently, his own -frugal meal quickly made, he came back. Theirs, -too, was made. They were seated on the stone flooring, -shoulder against the wall, hand touching hand. -They had no look of wicked folk.</p> - -<p>The old man found a stool, brought it and sat -down beside them. “You look worn and tired. The -roads have been bad to-day.”</p> - -<p>He spoke to Joan. “Bad here and there,” she -said. “We are a little tired.”</p> - -<p>The old man sat looking from one to the other. -Then he spoke with simplicity. “Is it true that you -are apostates from religion?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[428]</a></span></p> - -<p>“What,” said Aderhold, “is religion?—Is it love -of good? Then, with our hand in death’s, I dare aver -that we are not apostates!” He smiled at the old -man. “Since we entered this room you have shown -us a piece of religion.”</p> - -<p>“I would show you truly,” said the old man earnestly. -“I would show you Jesus.”</p> - -<p>Aderhold answered gently. “You do so, sir. Believe -that all of us know Jesus when we meet him.”</p> - -<p>The old man looked from one to the other. “You -do not seem to me wicked people. I know not how -it is, but you seem—” The sheriff and his men -rose noisily from table. There immediately ensued a -bustle in the place—boards and trestles being taken -away—bundles of straw brought in—men going -forth to look after the horses—men coming in with -the breath of the wet night. One came and called -the old parson, drew him away toward the small -inner room where he was to rest. Going, he said -but one word more to the two. “Good-night. I -wish you good sleep.”</p> - -<p>The host who had called him held up his hands. -“Reverend sir, I marvel how you can stand to talk -with such miscreants—”</p> - -<p>Joan and Aderhold lay upon the stone floor and -slept.... Night passed, the rain ceased, the clouds -broke, dawn came with magnificence. The old parson, -approaching, too, in the course of nature, his -death hour, slept on like a child in the inner room. -But Joan and Aderhold went forward with the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[429]</a></span> -guard. The inn sank from sight, the road stretched -before them.</p> - -<p>This day, riding into a village, they found there, -the centre until their arrival of excited interest, no -less a matter than an officer of the law with three or -four subordinates, come from the town to which -they were bound—despatched thence by the authorities -with orders to meet upon the way the party -known to be bringing from London that witch and -sorcerer, join themselves to it, and so give touch -of that town and county’s importance, assuming -charge, as it were, even leagues away, of their own -sinful ones.... Aderhold and Joan recognized the -head figure—across the years they saw him again -at the Hawthorn trials—a tall, lean, saturnine -minor piece of the law’s machinery who had herded -the prisoners in and out of that hall of judgement. -He was so tall and lean and lantern-jawed and grim -that he might have been a prize man for the rôle of -Death in a mystery play. For his part he came and -looked at them, threw back his head and laughed. -“Ha, ha!” he said. “We’ve got you back! The -wicked do not prosper!” With that he returned to -the sheriff with whom he would ride.... This village -was of the places where stones and other matters -were flung, together with whatever epithet came -to the lips. Joan and Aderhold opposed a quietness. -Both were bleeding when at last the law persuaded -or threatened down the raised hands and bore them -away for its own blows. Out even upon the open<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[430]</a></span> -road came, borne by the wind, “Witch—Witch—Witch! -Vile Witch!”</p> - -<p>There was a man with the added party who -proved to be of kin to the Hawthorn end of the -county. He knew Hawthorn and Hawthorn Forest. -Riding near to the two prisoners and discoursing -with his fellows, the two heard mention of many a -familiar name. He had a body of great bulk and a -round, good-humoured face, and a liking for his own -speech which he delivered—so as not to disturb his -superiors—in a monotone of low pitch. The two -heard him talk of the Hawthorn crops and fields and -weather, of the times good and bad, of the stock, the -sheep and cattle, of the streams and woods, of the -people.... This day was a high, cool autumn day -with a tang in the air. The sun shone, but there was -a wind and whirling leaves. Joan and Aderhold -knew that now there were not many miles.... At -dusk they halted within a hamlet where the folk -were too few to do more than stare and talk. There -was no gaol. The two were thrust into a damp and -dark place where firewood was piled. Bread and -water were given them, but no straw for sleeping -upon. When the heavy door was shut and barred, -and those without and the hamlet’s self sunk into -sleep or silence, all was as black, as cold and still, as -the grave is supposed to be.</p> - -<p>The two knew that next day they would reach -the town and the prison from which, six years and -more ago, they had fled away. There they would be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[431]</a></span> -separated.... Probably they would die together—would -be brought forth together to die—might -then each reach the other’s hand, might clasp it until -nearly the last. But not again in this life would they -be together like this, alone together, free, shut from -the world.... To-night, at first, all things flowed -away save the fact that they loved, save human -passion and sorrow and clinging. They lay in the -space left by the heaped firewood, in the intense -dark, and they held each other in their arms, close, -close! as if to defy all parting, and there were broken -words and sighs and tears. The last night—the -last night—</p> - -<p>The higher mood returned, though slowly, slowly. -With the bending of the night toward dawn, it was -here. They lay with clasped hands, and when they -spoke they spoke of love. All things else flowed -away, or did not flow away, for it was now as though -love tinted all, made the vast whole warm and vital.... -They spoke of their child, and of their island life -and home; they spoke of the old chief. They spoke of -people they had known and loved—of old Roger -Heron, of Master Hardwick—of many, of all people. -The draff and dross, the crooked and bent, all -came into the glow, the solvent. Love—love—love!... -Love took this form and took that form, -and now it flew with these wings, and now with other -wings—and it was love of the body and the earth -and all nature, and it was love of wisdom—love of -knowledge—love of the search—love of love—love<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[432]</a></span> -of truth! It was love that was not afraid—that -rose on splendid wings—that outwatched the night -and saw the morning coming....</p> - -<p>Outside began, faintly, a stirring. A cock crew -and was answered. A dog barked—the cock-crow -came again. A grey light stole in at the keyhole and -under the door of the windowless place they were in. -It strengthened until they could make out each -other’s face and form. The dog barked again, men’s -voices were heard.</p> - -<p>Joan and Aderhold rose to their knees, to their -feet, steadying each other, holding by the firewood. -The place, through the night, had had the chill of -the sepulchre. They knew it to be their last moment -together; hereafter, to the end, there would be others -by. They stood locked in each other’s arms, their -lips meeting.... Steps were heard without and the -fall of the chain from across the door. They released -each other, they stood apart. The door swung open, -light rushed in. “Come forth, you wicked ones! -Time to ride on—and to-night we’ll lodge you in -the nest you flew from!”</p> - -<p>There could not have been a fairer autumn day. -And now as they rode the country grew more and -more familiar.... While the day was yet young, -all were halted for a few minutes before a tavern set -among trees, its sign a great rose painted on a black -ground. While ale in jacks and tankards was brought -forth for the guardians of the law, the two prisoners -had brief speech together.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[433]</a></span></p> - -<p>“The Rose Tavern,” said Aderhold. “It was in -this place that I first met Master Hardwick. It was -here that came the turn toward Hawthorn.”</p> - -<p>“We have not far to go now.”</p> - -<p>“No, not far.”</p> - -<p>In the doorway stood the tall hostess that Aderhold -remembered. She stood with arms akimbo, regarding -the prisoners with a mien so hostile as to approach -the ferocious. “Aaah!” she said. “I’d like -to help bring straw and wood!” She spat toward the -two. “Haven’t <i>I</i> had things bewitched?—a gold -earring taken from under my eyes, and our ricks -burned, and ill luck for a year running—and a bat -this summer came flapping through the house every -eve, and none could beat it down!” She was speaking -to the constable’s man who knew Hawthorn. -“Wherever that vile witch has been this weary time, -be sure she’s sent her word out over all these parts -to do us harm—”</p> - -<p>“And that’s very possible,” said the round-faced -man.</p> - -<p>“Aren’t you going to take them by Hawthorn?”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” answered the other. “Turn off this side -of town—go round by Hawthorn Wood—then -through Hawthorn, and so back to town and the -prison. It’s miles out, but Hawthorn wants it done. -There’s a murmur of more witches—and it’s good -warning to see how such folk fare!”</p> - -<p>Joan and Aderhold, startled, exchanged glances. -They had not thought of that—of coming to their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">[434]</a></span> -prison from the Hawthorn end. They would be -longer together. Joan’s lips parted. “And Hawthorn -Forest—Ah, maybe we shall see Heron’s -cottage—”</p> - -<p>The sun and shadow on the road, the waving -trees, the white fleets of clouds in a blue, blue sky.... -They came to the crossroads with the suicide’s -grave—they came to the rise of earth where stood -the gibbet with its swinging chains—they came to -a view of the castle wood and the castle and the town -beyond. One of the men asked a question of the -round-faced man. “Who lives up there?”</p> - -<p>“The earl,” said the round-faced man. “But he’s -away now. It used to be that if he wasn’t there his -cousin, Sir Richard, was. But Sir Richard went to -France, and they say he married there and has a son.—I -used to know Gervaise his man. But Gervaise -has gone too.”</p> - -<p>The sun made of the castle woods golden woods. -Joan could see the Black Tower—see where deep -among the trees would be the huntsman’s house. -A great bird rose above the gold-green and sailed -away.... Here, a mile from the first outlying house, -was the narrow and little-used road that, curving -aside from the town, led through some miles of country, -tilled and untilled, to Hawthorn Forest; then, -with a half turn, came at its leisure to Hawthorn, -and so touched again the highway. They took this -road.</p> - -<p>Until they came to a stream, in size between a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">[435]</a></span> -brook and a river, the country was to the two as the -other familiar country. But this was the stream -that murmured past the Oak Grange. They were -riding by its shore, they were going toward the -Grange—now indeed it grew to be known land. -Aderhold knew every winding.... The two rode as -in a dream. Before them, in the distance, in a golden -haze, rose a forest. “Hawthorn Wood”—and -Joan’s voice made the words dreamy music. The -sun was warm now, the sky was blue, the leaves were -falling, but without sadness, ready to go, to return -once more to the elements, build again. The stream -bent and the road with it. There came a long reach -of murmuring water, sliding by a pebbly strand. -Across it now were fields that once had gone with -the Oak Grange.... A little farther, and they saw -the old house, and before it the fairy oak.</p> - -<p>Just at the footbridge across the stream sounded -an order to halt. The lean, grim man whom the town -had sent spoke in a harsh and rattling voice. “This -is where he made gold and practised sorcery.—Thou -God-denier! behold thy old lair, how accursed -it looks!”</p> - -<p>To the two it did not seem accursed. It stood an -old, deserted, ruinous house, but the ivy was green -upon it, and the sunshine bathed it, and the swallows -circled above the roof. The oak tree in front -lived, and from its acorns were growing other oaks.... -Joan and Aderhold looked long and earnestly. -The air was thronged with memories and there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">[436]</a></span> -seemed a weaving music. They were not unhappy—the -artifex within them was not unhappy. But -those that were with them thought that they must -be so.</p> - -<p>The horses were in motion again. And now the -road turned and became Hawthorn Forest road that -ran to Hawthorn. The Oak Grange passed from -sight, the murmur of the stream left the ears. They -were within Hawthorn Forest. The great trees rose -around; there fell gold shafts of light; there came the -odour, damp and rich, of the forest mould deepening, -deepening since old time. Down a purple vista -they saw deer moving—a faint wind was blowing—there -was a drifting, drifting down of leaves.... -To Joan and Aderhold this forest breathed music. -They were glad to be here once again. They knew -the single trees and the groups of trees, they knew -each picture within a picture: loved the detail and -loved the whole. It was sweet, before death, to have -been in Hawthorn Wood again.</p> - -<p>Heron’s cottage. When they were forth from the -forest they would see that plainly, riding by. Perhaps -they would draw rein there too. The red crept -into Joan’s cheek, her grey eyes grew bright and -wistful.... The forest stopped; the grassy road -brought them out into full sunshine, a high blue sky -arching the open, autumn country. Heron’s cottage.... -There was yet the green path from the road, -yet the fruit trees, bronze now and trembling in the -wind—but there was no thatched cottage. “Vile<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">[437]</a></span> -witch!” said the tall man, “Hawthorn burned your -house.”</p> - -<p>Hawthorn—there was no great distance now to -Hawthorn. There had never been much passing -on this road, little human life going up and down. -This day there seemed none; moreover, a cot or two -by the wayside showed no folk about the doors, appeared -shut and left to care for themselves. At dawn -a man had been sent forward on a fresh horse—the -loneliness of the road now connected itself with that. -“Everybody’s gone to Hawthorn,” said the round-faced -man.</p> - -<p>Hawthorn Church, stone amid stone-like yew -trees, Hawthorn roofs showed over the rim of the -fields. Out of a coppice rose a lark and soaring high -sang up there in the blue. The Hawthorn Forest -road joined the highroad; guard and prisoners coming -upon this turned now to Hawthorn village. Carthew -House—they passed Carthew House—they -passed the outlying cottages, among them that of -Alison Inch—they came into Hawthorn and to -Hawthorn Church and Master Clement’s house. -Here were the people....</p> - -<p>A bench had been placed by the churchyard gate, -and upon this stood Master Clement, raised as by a -pulpit over Hawthorn. Near him stood Squire -Carthew and his brother, and the latter stood grim -and grey as granite. It was his intention to rise in -church the coming Sunday and before all Hawthorn -acknowledge that six-years-past sin. He owed that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">[438]</a></span> -to God. The confession might or might not put in -jeopardy his future in England, but, however that -might be, he would make it—make it publicly! -So he might have peace and could go on with the -great work, assured that God had forgiven.... -For to-day he had made himself come hither, taking -it as part of his duty. Master Clement had urged -that it was his duty. With a stern face he gazed upon -the two, but they, after one glance, looked at him -no more.</p> - -<p>All around, packed in the churchyard and the -street, were the people of Hawthorn and its neighbourhood. -How many familiar faces they saw—but -how few out of which superstition had not -razed kindliness! Heretofore on this journey, where -they had been set in the eye of a gathered crowd, -the two had met with physical blows no less than -with hard words. But the Hawthorn throng was -held in hand. No stone or clod or refuse was -thrown. The hard words arose, broke over them -heavily, a sordid and bitter wave. But this, too, the -minister checked. He raised his arms and flung them -wide, he shook his lean and nervous hands. Thrust -to the front of the throng stood the tinker with -whom Joan had once walked on the road from the -town. “Hist, hist!” said the tinker. “Now will -they hear their last sermon!”</p> - -<p>“‘<i>And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and -death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them, -and they were judged according to their works....<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">[439]</a></span> -And whosoever was not found written in the book of -life was cast into the lake of fire!</i>’</p> - -<p>“‘<i>And the devil that deceived them was cast into the -lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false -prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night forever -and ever.</i>’”</p> - -<p>Hawthorn drew in its breath and shivered with -that sermon. They said that it was the greatest that -Master Clement had ever preached, and he had -preached a-many great ones! Some of the simpler -folk almost looked for fire to come down from heaven -and consume the wicked leech and that vilest witch -where they stood. It would have been a wonderful -sight and lesson! But doubtless God wanted the -forms of the law carried out—though they could -not but still think how wonderful would have been -a visible sign....</p> - -<p>Joan and Aderhold were an hour in Hawthorn.... -It passed; all hours passed, though some, and -this among them, went on wounded feet.</p> - -<p>It passed. They were in motion again. The -Hawthorn folk that cried bitter words behind them, -the narrow street, the small, familiar houses with -dooryards where the flowers were fading, the ale-house, -the green, the sexton’s house, other houses, -the elms and willows that marked the village end—all -were overpassed, left behind. Here at last was -the open road, and they had six miles to ride together.... -Hawthorn faded from the mind.</p> - -<p>It was afternoon. The gold light lay softly over<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">[440]</a></span> -the country that had always seemed to them a very -fair country—that seemed so still. The wind had -fallen. They rode side by side. Those that guarded -them were tired with the long day and its various -excitements. These rode in silence or talked among -themselves in voices somewhat subdued, and for a -time let the prisoners go unmarked. When they -came within sight of the town it would be different. -Then all would straighten in their saddles and -closely surround the two, assuming the proper air of -vigilance. But now they allowed them to ride side -by side and gave no heed to what words they might -speak to each other.</p> - -<p>They were simple words that Joan and Aderhold -spoke—old, old words of love and tenderness. They -spoke of courage. And they spoke of Truth, the -Origin and Goal. And they loved each other, and -the light of all suns, and they found song and sweetness, -promise and fulfilment even in this autumnal -day....</p> - -<p>The miles fell away like the leaves from the trees. -The ground rose; they had a great view bathed in -the amber light. There flowed a gleaming crescent. -“The river!” said Joan.</p> - -<p>The town that they had seen from the south, now -they saw from the north. They saw the river and -the arched bridge, the climbing streets and many -roofs; they saw the great church and near it the dark -prison, and above the town the castle and the castle -wood. The sun was sinking, the light was reddening;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441">[441]</a></span> -above, the sky sprang pure, without a stain, for the -fleets of clouds had sailed away.</p> - -<p>The tall, lean man spoke. “Witch and blasphemer! -do you see yon ragged field sloping down? That is -where we will hang you.”</p> - -<p>Joan and Aderhold, going toward the river, looked -upon the ragged field with steadfastness, but gave -but few moments to that sight. Before them was -the arched bridge, and they saw, even on this side of -it, people gathering. Presently the sheriff’s men -would come between them, surrounding each, making -one go before the other. Now they had these last -few moments side by side. Their hands might touch, -their eyes be eloquent. Farewell—and farewell—and -oh, fare you well, love—my love!...</p> - -<p>The road descended to the river and the bridge. -There arose the sound they knew from the crowd -they knew. The sheriff’s men pushed between them; -they must go one before the other. So each might -be better seen as well as better guarded. They -crossed the river; they mounted the steep street; -they came to the town square, past the great church’s -sculptured portal.... The two had been ordered -to dismount, were now afoot.... Here was the -pillory—here was the black prison’s frowning front, -the prison steps, the open door.... The setting -sun flooded the place with red light. A flint, flung -by some strong arm, had cut Aderhold’s forehead. -With his hand he wiped the blood away and looked -to see Joan. She was upon the prison steps, lifted so<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442">[442]</a></span> -that the roaring crowd might see her. That great -light from the sun beat strongly upon face and form. -The form was drawn to its height, the face was high, -resolved, and beautiful. But the crowd shouted, -“The witch! The witch! Look at the light as of -fire! The fire has her already! Witch—Witch—Witch!”</p> - -<p>Joan mounted the last step, the black prison -gaped for her, she entered. Aderhold, mounting, -met also that great shaft of light. The voice of the -crowd swelled, grew phrensied, but he heeded it not, -and with a face lit from within followed Joan into -the prison.</p> - - -<p class="pc2 mid">THE END</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443">[443]</a></span></p> -<p> </p> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444">[444]</a></span></p> - -<p class="pc4 reduct"><span class="f1 mid">The Riverside Press</span><br /> -CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS<br /> -U·S·A<br /></p> - -</div> -</div> - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Witch, by Mary Johnston - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WITCH *** - -***** This file should be named 53109-h.htm or 53109-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/3/1/0/53109/ - -Produced by Giovanni Fini, sp1nd and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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