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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75212 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+  Transcriber’s Note
+  Italic text displayed as: _italic_
+
+
+
+
+A MIRROR FOR WITCHES
+
+[Illustration: Demon and woman kissing]
+
+
+
+
+  A MIRROR FOR WITCHES
+
+  in which is reflected the Life, Machinations,
+  and Death of Famous DOLL BILBY, who,
+  with a more than _feminine perversity_, preferred
+  a Demon to a Mortal Lover. Here is
+  also told how and why a Righteous and Most
+  Awful JUDGEMENT befell her, destroying
+  both Corporeal Body and Immortal Soul.
+
+  By
+
+  ESTHER FORBES
+
+  With woodcuts by
+
+  ROBERT GIBBINGS
+
+  [Illustration: Decoration]
+
+  BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+
+  HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
+
+  The Riverside Press Cambridge
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY ESTHER FORBES HOSKINS
+
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
+
+
+  The Riverside Press
+  CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
+  PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+MARY AND GERHART JENTSCH
+
+
+
+
+A MIRROR FOR WITCHES
+
+
+
+
+A MIRROR FOR WITCHES
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+1
+
+_Certain Examples to Show Doll Bilby not alone among Women in her
+preference for Evil. The Cases of Ry, Goose, Leda, Danaë, etc., cited._
+
+It has long been known that, on occasions, devils in the shape of
+humanity or in their own shapes (that is, with horns, hoofs, and tails)
+may fancy mortal women. By dark arts, sly promises of power, flattery,
+etc., they may prevail even upon Christian women, always to the
+destruction of these women’s souls and often to that of their bodies.
+
+For in Northumberland, Meslie Ry was burned in 1616 because she had
+taken a fiend to love.
+
+A few years later, Christie Goose, a single woman upwards of forty
+years, suddenly flew lunatic—and that upon the Lord’s Day. Then she did
+confess that each night and every night the Devil, wickedly assuming
+the shape of Mr. Oates, God’s minister at Crumplehorn, Oxon., came to
+her through her window. This fact amazed Crumplehorn, for Goose was of
+all women most pious, and had sat for years in humble prayerfulness at
+the feet of Mr. Oates. Some were astonished that even a devil should
+find need for this same Goose, who was of hideous aspect.
+
+There was a young jade, servant in an alderman’s house in London, who,
+although she confessed nothing and remained obdurate to the end, was
+hanged and then burned because she bore a creature with horns on its
+head and a six-inch tail behind. Such a creature the just magistrates
+determined no mortal man might beget, although the saucy wench
+suggested that an alderman might. Moreover, certain children in the
+neighbourhood testified that they had twice or thrice seen ‘a burly big
+black man’ sitting on the ridgepole.
+
+Some assume that as the gods of antiquity were in no way gods (being
+seekers after evil—not after light), they should therefore be
+considered caco-demons or devils. The Reverend Pyam Plover, of Boston,
+has written learnedly on this subject, saying, in part, ‘For is it
+not possible that the Lord God of Israel, being those days but the
+God of _Israel_, may have permitted certain of his Fallen Angels to
+stray from the vitals of Hell and disport themselves through Greece
+and ancient Italy? Here they revealed themselves ... in many ways to
+heathen people, who falsely worshipped them as _gods_. If this be true
+Zeus might better assume his true name of _Satan_, and let us call
+Apollo but _Apollyon_ and recognize in Mars, Hermes, etc., Beelzebub
+and Belial. Then may the female “divinities” be true descendants of
+Lilith.’ So one may learn from antiquity (consider Leda, Io, Danaë, and
+others) how great is the ardour felt by devils for mortal women.
+
+As is not yet forgotten, in 1662, near threescore years ago, a woman
+called Greensmith, living at Hartford in New England, confessed the
+Devil had carnal knowledge of her. For this she was hanged.
+
+More strangely yet, lived, for brief space of years, famous Doll Bilby,
+best known as ‘Bilby’s Doll’. She flourished at Cowan Corners, close
+by the town of Salem, but an afternoon’s journey from my own parish of
+Sudbury. Of other women devil-ridden, be it Leda or Ry, Greensmith or
+Danaë, Christie Goose or La Voisin, little can be said, for but little
+is known. All were witches (if we accept as witches such women as
+traffic with fiends), but little else is known. Yet of Bilby’s famous
+Doll, in the end all things were known. From old wives’ tales, court
+records, and the diaries of certain men, from the sworn affidavits and
+depositions of others, from the demonologies of Mr. Cotton Mather, and
+the cipher journal of Mr. Zacharias Zelley, we may know with a nicety
+what this woman was and how she lived, from whence she came, how she
+grew to witchcraft, how she felt, thought, and at the last how she died.
+
+
+2
+
+_Mr. Bilby sails far to seek out_ TROUBLE, _and, having found Trouble,
+nurtures it._
+
+She was born of a wicked witch-woman and begotten by one who was no
+better, that is, by a warlock. These two devil-worshippers and, they
+say, two hundred more were burned in one great holocaust at Mont Hoël
+in Brittany. Black smoke, screams of death, stench of flesh settled
+down over town and harbour, causing sickness and even vomiting.
+
+On that same day, by evil fortune, a brig manned by Dawlish men stood
+in the Bouche de Saint-Hoël. These men, seeing that it was fête day,
+and curious because of the smoke, the screams, and the stench, went to
+the holocaust. There they saw a wild child, more animal or goblin than
+human being. This wild child would have followed her mother, who burned
+in the heart of the fire, if soldiers had not pushed her back. A priest
+bade the soldiers let her pass to death, for, being of witch-people,
+she would undoubtedly burn sooner or later. The Englishmen protested,
+and Mr. Jared Bilby, captain and owner of the brig, caught and held
+the wild child, who did not struggle against him as she had against
+the soldiers. Instead she held fast to him, for even the wicked may
+recognize goodness. The priest showed his yellow fangs at the Dawlish
+men. He hated and scorned them. ‘Take the child and be gone. She was
+born of a witch-woman and will grow to witchcraft and do much harm—but
+in England among the heretics. Be gone.’
+
+The child clung to Mr. Bilby and he to her. He took her in his arms,
+and she lay corpse-pale and glass-eyed like one about to die. This men
+remembered. When he put her down upon the deck of the brig, he was
+badly sweated as though his burden had been more than he, a strong
+young man, might bear. He told his men the child weighed as though a
+child of stone. Some thought that his heart mistook him, and that he
+already regretted the acceptance of so dangerous a gift.
+
+Gathering his men about him and having prayed, he gave thanks to
+Jehovah, Who, although He had never given him a child of his own body,
+yet had seen fit to send this poor little one to him. Then he bade his
+men keep their tongues behind their teeth, telling no one from whence
+was this child (which in the future should be his child), nor the
+manner of her parents’ death, nor the harm which the priest swore she
+should live to perform. This promise his men kept for years, but in the
+end, when they were old men, they preferred to serve Gossip and Scandal
+rather than a kind master, long, long dead.
+
+For days the child lay like death, only occasionally jumping madly from
+her pallet, screaming ‘Le feu! Le feu! Le feu!’ then falling back,
+covering her face with her hands and laughing horribly. The captain
+coaxed and petted her, urged her to eat, and quieted her with his
+hands. So by love he restored her to humanity.
+
+Because of her small size he called her ‘Doll,’ which name she well
+lived up to, never acquiring the height and weight of other women. No
+one ever knew her real age. She may have been seven or perhaps six when
+she first came to England. Being unable to talk English and at first
+unable to serve herself, she may have seemed younger than she was. Yet,
+on the other hand, Fear, Grief, and Sickness often make their Hosts
+appear older than the fact.
+
+Mr. Bilby believed that the shock of her parents’ death (for they were
+burned before her eyes, her mother crying out to her most piteously
+from the midst of flame) had broken the reins of memory. He thought she
+had forgotten everything that lay back of her reawakening to life on
+board his brig, which was called God’s Mercy. Also he comforted himself
+with the belief that if—as might be—she had learned any little tricks
+of witchery, or if she had ever been taken to Sabbat or Black Mass, or
+if she had looked upon the Prince of Hell, or even if (being led on
+by her parents) she had sworn to serve him, she would have forgotten
+all these things. She was born again and this time of God and to God,
+whom Mr. Bilby piously swore she should serve—Him and Him alone. The
+child had been so vehemently frightened she had forgotten all good and
+needful things, how to dress herself, how to eat with knife and spoon.
+She had forgotten the language of her birth.
+
+But of evil she remembered everything.
+
+
+3
+
+_He brings the Foundling to his own hearth and to the bosom of his
+Goodwife. There the goblin-child rewards Kindness and Mercy with
+Malediction and Evil. She overlooks the Goodwife._
+
+Hannah, wife of Jared Bilby, would not accept her sterility with
+Christian fortitude. She railed against the wisdom of God, saying,
+‘Mrs. Such-and-Such is but half so big and fine a woman as I, yet she
+has three sons. Goody This-and-That, the jade, can find but little
+favour in the eyes of her Maker, yet, to _her_ He sends more children
+than she can feed; but I, a pious, godly, praying woman, remain
+barren.’ Which, she wickedly averred, showed the injustice of Divinity.
+However, by curious chance or mischance, soon after Mr. Bilby set out
+with his men and brig for the coasts of France and Spain, she found
+herself with child. Some say the Lord tired of her railing, and, to
+punish her, first raised up her hopes and then sent Doll to blight them
+for her.
+
+Summer wore away. The nights grew chill. She was four months with
+child. Then Mr. Bilby, late one evening, came to Dawlish harbour. With
+him was his goblin-child, now grown pretty and playful. He arrived
+home in the black of the night and through pelting rain. The child he
+carried wrapped in his greatcoat to protect her from the cruel storm.
+He shook the shutter which he knew was by his wife’s bedboard.
+
+‘Woman, woman, get up and open to me.’
+
+The woman lay for warmth with her servant wench, Susan Croker. The fury
+of the night shewed forth the grandeur of God. The wind howled above
+the beating of the rain. Croker cried to her mistress not to open the
+door on such a night. It could be no living man who knocked, for it is
+on such vexed and angry nights as these the sea gives up its dead.
+
+Hannah was a fearless woman. She got quickly to the door, unbarred it,
+and, in a deluge of wind and wet, Mr. Bilby entered with his burden.
+Her heart mistook her. She cried out, ‘Jared, what have you there in
+that great bundle?’ So he took it to the hearth and, as the women
+knelt, throwing kindling on the fire, he opened the bundle and out
+popped the goblin-child. She shuddered away from the fire (a thing she
+always feared) and clutched her foster father with her little hands,
+gazing into his face with round black eyes. Every thread of her spikey
+hair was tumbled up on end. The women cried in horror that this was no
+child. This was an imp, a monkey, a pug. But Jared Bilby on his knees
+protected the foundling, both from the fire and the women’s angry
+glances. He soothed her with his body and kind words, ‘Ah, the fire
+would never devour her.’ He was here, and he would never leave her.
+She was his child, etc. He would always love and cherish her—and the
+like. The child pushed her tously head under his chin and froze into
+stillness.
+
+[Illustration: Child holding man]
+
+Susan Croker told many that, from the beginning, the child bewitched
+him. Nor did the affection which Bilby gave his Doll ever seem like the
+love which men feel to their children, but rather the darker and often
+unholy passion which is evoked by mature, or almost mature women—a
+passion which witches, when young and comely, have often engendered
+with ferocious intensity. As long as he lived he was forever stroking
+her shaggy black hair, looking lovingly into those button-round eyes,
+and kissing a wide hobgoblin mouth which many a Christian would fear
+to kiss. Hannah was a lusty, jealous woman who could not abide such
+mean rivalry as that of a foundling child. The woman, who had always
+been a gossiping wife, now, under the baleful influence of Doll, seemed
+like to become a shrew. She was steely set in her hatred of the child,
+although she fed her, gave her a corner to sleep in, and taught her
+some small prayers. With her the child seemed dull, indifferent, but
+with Mr. Bilby she was merry, playful, and loving. So the one thought
+her a knowing child and the other a zany.
+
+Mr. Bilby would not tell his wife where he had found Doll, but it did
+trouble him that the woman so cunningly insisted that either she was
+the child of a witch or the begotten of the Devil. Even Susan Croker,
+who was kind to the foundling, had horrid suspicions of her. She could
+not teach Doll the noble, sonorous lines of Our Lord’s Prayer, although
+the imp was quick to learn worthless things, such as ‘This Little Pig
+Goes to Market’ or ‘A Cat Comes Fiddling Out of the Barn.’
+
+The child, having been in the house a month, there occurred a chance to
+show what she could do—that is, what evil she could do.
+
+
+4
+
+_Doll covets a ship for a toy and the whole of her Foster Father’s
+love. She nefariously gains her ends and slays a Dangerous Rival._
+
+The midwife promised Hannah a great thumping boy handsome as his
+mother, strong as his father. He should either wear the bands of the
+clergy or walk the quarter-deck of the king’s navy. Because her husband
+favoured the nautical life for his unborn son, he made him a rattle in
+the shape of a ship. In the hull were seven balls which, when the ship
+was shaken, rattled. Now Doll was forever leaning against his knees and
+watching him as he carved out this bauble. As one after another of the
+seven balls were liberated in the heart of the wood, she would laugh
+and gloat. It was not a toy for her, but for him who should (according
+to nature) supplant her in her foster father’s love. In her evil heart
+she must have brooded on these things and come to hate this other child
+that would possess the ship and Bilby’s affection. Her hands were
+always outstretched to the rattle and she cried, ‘Give, give, give.’
+
+One day as they were thus—man and child—Hannah came in from the
+milk-house. The woman was jealous—not only for her own sake, but for
+the sake of the unborn. ‘For,’ she thought, ‘what shall he, who gives
+all to a foundling, have left for his own son? Not only has this wicked
+girl turned him away from me, but she takes the rightful place of his
+own child.’ Then she said:
+
+‘It is not well that a woman in my condition should be exposed to
+contrary and evil influences. Jared, send away your “pretty pet”;
+give her to the wife of your ship’s cook to keep—at least until I am
+delivered. Many wiser than I, yes, and wiser than you....’ Her jaw
+swung loose as though broke. Her teeth stuck out, her eyes bulged, for
+the goblin-child, through her mat of hair and out of her wild bright
+eyes, was staring at her. She stared and moved her lips in a whisper,
+then she skipped across the room, grinning in diabolical glee. Mrs.
+Hannah felt the curse go through her. The babe in her womb moved in its
+wretchedness, and was blasted. The woman felt its tiny soul flutter to
+her lips and escape. She knew that Doll (being of some infernal origin)
+could see this same soul, and she guessed, from the roving of her
+eyes, how it clung for a moment to its mother’s lips, how it flew to
+the Bible upon the stand (in which its name would never be recorded),
+how it poised upon the window-sill, then, unborn and frustrated, it
+departed to whatever Paradise or Hell God prepares for such half-formed
+souls. Hannah began to screech and wail, then fell back upon the bed
+in a swoon.
+
+The body of the unborn child shrivelled within her, and, when a male
+midwife was called from Dawlish, he said she had been but full of air.
+She never was again with child. Some said (and Captain Bilby among
+them) that she never had been—even on the ’bove-related most famous
+occasion.
+
+But if, as the most informed and thoughtful have said, the blasting of
+Hannah’s infant was indeed a fact, then we have to hand, and early in
+the life history of Doll Bilby, an actual case of witchcraft. And is it
+likely such monstrous power (blasting unborn life with a glance or at
+most a muttered curse) should be given to any one who had not already
+set her name to the Devil’s Book, and compacted herself to Hell?
+
+
+5
+
+_The New Land holds greater promise than the Old. Mr. Bilby, Ux et
+filia say fare-you-well to England and take up residence close to Salem
+and not far from Boston, in the Bay Colony. They prosper. The child
+grows an evil pace._
+
+In those days England offered little peace to men (like Captain Bilby)
+who would worship God in their own way, and in accordance with His
+own holy teachings and the dictates of their own hearts—not according
+to teachings of bishops or priests. So Mr. Bilby often yearned towards
+that newer land which lay far west beyond the Atlantic. In time he sold
+his brig, God’s Mercy, and his freehold. The agent of the Bay Colony,
+in his office at Maiden Lane, London, told him to get to Southampton
+with his wife, child, and gear. Within the month he should sail.
+
+Mrs. Hannah protested that if the child went she would not. Then he
+would humour and praise her, so at last she went, although with much
+bad grace.
+
+In the year 1663 the ship Elizabeth arrived, by the goodness of
+God, to the colony at Massachusetts Bay, and in her came an hundred
+souls. There were yeomen, farmers, braziers, wainers, pewterers,
+etc., indentured servants, apprentices, etc., and certain gentlemen
+scholars, etc. But in after years the most famous of all these people
+was Bilby’s Doll, and it is she who has made the name of the ship
+Elizabeth remembered. There was in the hold a cargo of close to an
+hundred Bibles, and to this beneficent influence many attributed the
+quick fair passage which the Elizabeth enjoyed. No one thought it
+possible that the button-eyed foster child of Mr. Bilby could be a
+weather breeder. In fact no one thought of the child except to wonder
+at the foolish fondness which her ‘father’ continually showed her. They
+thought of the Bibles below and thanked God for their sunny voyage.
+Rather should they have thought of the witch-child. For good things,
+such as fine weather, may spring from evil people.
+
+Also on this ship came one Zacharias Zelley, an Oxford man and a
+widower. He was no longer young, nor was he an old man. In demeanour he
+was sad and thoughtful. After some shiftings he, too, like the Bilbys,
+came to settle at Cowan Corners, and there he preached the Word of God.
+But in time he fell from God, and of him more hereafter.
+
+The new land prospered the Bilbys and they were well content. The
+plantation which Mr. Bilby was able to buy was not only of admirable
+size, well-set-up with house, barns, sheds, etc., but it was already
+reduced to good order and its fertility was proved. Yet for many years,
+down to this present day, Bilby’s lands can produce little if anything
+except that coarse yellow broom which the vulgar call witches’ blood.
+
+The cellar hole of this house still stands upon the skirts of Cowan
+Corners, and but six miles removed from Salem. In those days there was
+a good road before this house leading from Salem to Newburyport. Beyond
+this road were salt meadows and the sea. To the north of the house lay
+fields of maize, English grass, corn, peelcorn, barley, oats, pumpkins,
+ending only at the waters of the River Inch (as it was called in those
+days). To the south were the adjoining lands of Deacon Thumb. But to
+the west, beyond the rough pastures, and too close for a wholesome
+peace of mind, was a forest of a size and terror such as no Englishman
+could conceive of unless he should actually see it. It stretched
+without break farther than man could imagine, and the trees of it were
+greater than the masts of an admiral or the piers of a cathedral. Yet
+was it always a green and gloomy night in this forest, and over all was
+silence, unbreakable.
+
+Many thought the tawny savages who lived within were veritable devils,
+and that, somewhere within this vastness, Satan himself might be found.
+To this Mr. Zacharias Zelley, having taken up the ministry at Cowan
+Corners, would not listen. ‘For,’ he said, ‘we left the Devil behind us
+in England. Seek God in the heart of this majestic and awful forest—not
+the Devil. When I was a boy in Shropshire I knew the very niche in the
+rocks where old women said the Devil lived and had his kitchen. It was
+there he kept his wife. Every holiday I hid close by the rocks, hoping
+to see his children.... Let us leave him there in the Old England, but
+in the New keep our eyes pure and open against the coming of the Lord.’
+
+Atheism as the good and learned Glanvill, in his ‘Sadducismus
+Triumphatus,’ has proved, is begun in Sadducism and those that dare
+not bluntly say ‘there is no God’ (for a fair step and introduction)
+content themselves to deny there are spirits or witches or devils. Yet
+how sad to see one of the clergy first agree that the Devil could be
+left behind in England and soon claim there is no Devil, no witches, no
+spirits. For without these awful presences, who may be sure of God?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+1
+
+_There is a small smell of_ WITCHCRAFT _in and about Boston. A straw
+doll taken to Meeting throws many into confusion._
+
+In the fall of 1665 two were hanged in Boston for the bedevilment of an
+elderly woman, her cousin Germain, and her swine.
+
+In that same year Mr. Saul Peterham, a godly, decent man, refused some
+small rotten apples to an ancient and malicious hag. For this the old
+crone muttered at him, making an evil sign by her thumb and her nose,
+and took herself off in great bad humour. Mr. Peterham, on returning
+to his house, found that his wife—an estimable church woman—had fallen
+from a ladder she had put to the loft for the purpose of observing the
+conduct of her servant wench and the indentured male servant, the exact
+moment the crone had made her evil sign. The elders of the Church had
+at the old woman and forced her, weeping and on her knees, to forswear
+the Devil, his imps, and his ways, and to continue more strictly in the
+ways of God. It being observed that she could both weep and say the
+Lord’s Prayer, many believed the accusation of witchcraft to be a false
+one, such as is often launched against disagreeable and impotent old
+women.
+
+By spring there was yet another suspicion of witchcraft in the Bay
+Colony, and this at Cowan Corners. In a hut close by the seashore, and
+in great misery, lived an old pauper called Greene and his wife. He
+was a tinker, but there were better tinkers than he, and he got little
+work to do. His wife was a proud woman, born in Kent of high rank,
+yet, by turn of fortune, she was so reduced as to have become the wife
+of a tinker. Her craft in herbs got her some money and more ill fame,
+nor was she content to raise and sell the honest herbs of England, but
+she must continually associate herself with the heathen tawny savages
+and thus learn arts—doubtless often evil arts—from them. The Indians
+venerated her, calling her ‘White Mother’ and Moon Woman.’ She went
+even into the great forest with more safety than any man. She was
+loving towards these peoples and had much traffic with them, in spite
+of the fact the Church elders had warned her twice, saying it is better
+for a woman to keep her own house than to go abroad through the woods
+alone and no one knew on what errand.
+
+One Sabbath in the midst of the House of the Lord a poppet contrived
+of straw and maize, with a leather head and a grinning face on it,
+fell from below her skirts. None at the moment questioned her boldly
+as to what purpose she contrived this poppet, yet all thought of those
+dollies witches make but to destroy again, that their enemies may
+dwindle with the dwindling dolly.
+
+Later in the week three deacons called upon her and demanded
+explanation. She was distrait, cried out upon them in anger because
+of their suspicions, and said she had but made a toy for Bilby’s poor
+little Doll, who, she said, was beaten and cruelly used by that shrew
+Hannah. The incident was then dismissed except for a public reprimand
+for a woman so depraved as to put into the hand of a child a toy upon
+the Lord’s Day and in the Lord’s House. After this the Greenes lost
+what friends they had, and no one came commonly to their hut upon the
+salt marsh but Bilby’s wicked Doll.
+
+On a February night Hannah Bilby woke overcome with retching and
+vomiting. In the morning Mr. Kleaver, the surgeon, being called,
+took away two ounces of blood from the forearm; still she continued
+in wretched state three days. By the oppression on her chest and
+especially because of certain night sweatings and terrors, she became
+convinced she was bewitched and frankly accused Goodwife Greene. Mr.
+Zelley roughly bade her hold her tongue (this being but one of many
+times when he befriended a witch) and declared there was no reason why
+Greene should wish her harm. At which statement many were amazed, for
+they thought every one knew that Greene loved little Doll and hated
+the foster mother because of her cruelty. Through all the clustering
+villages—Salem, Ipswich, Cowan Corners, etc.—it was whispered how Doll
+had surrendered to Greene either parings from Mrs. Hannah’s nails or
+hair from her body, and had thus given Greene the wherewithal to work
+magic.
+
+Within a year all suspicion seemed to have passed away from Goody
+Greene, but in a hundred ways more doubts gathered about the child and
+she was whispered of. Mrs. Bilby told many, here one and there two,
+usually with entreaties for prayers and commands for secrecy, that
+the girl was born and bred a witch. She told how her own unborn son
+(that thumping boy) had been blasted. She told them to watch—was not
+Mr. Bilby himself bewitched by her? So it seemed to many. There were
+no clothes fine enough in Boston for his dear Doll—he needs must send
+to England for them. Sometimes he held her on his knee—and she a girl
+of thirteen or fourteen. Even when the elders and the minister came
+to call on him, and Hannah, as befitted her gender, withdrew from the
+room, Bilby would keep his ridiculous hobgoblin squatting at his feet.
+As he talked, he patted her shaggy, spikey, hair.
+
+The child had nothing to do with children of her own age, nor did godly
+parents wish their children to play with her. For the most part she was
+a silent thing, stealing about on feet as quiet as cats’ paws. To her
+foster father she was pretty and frolicsome. To Goodwife Greene she was
+loving, and stole from the Bilby larder food for the wretched paupers.
+With her mouth she said little to any one, but her eyes spoke—those
+round button eyes, and they spoke secret and evil things.
+
+
+2
+
+_Monstrous facts regarding Doll’s earliest youth which Mr. Zelley
+repeated almost twenty years after her death. How she attended Black
+Sabbath, etc. How she saw the Devil in Brittany and probably swore to
+serve him, etc._
+
+When the time came late in his life that Mr. Zelley, being old and
+broken, was accused of witchcraft, he told, after long questionings,
+much that he knew about Bilby’s Doll. For instance, he said she never
+forgot one of those wicked things which she had learned of her parents
+in Brittany.
+
+It is true, the shock and horror of their death caused such mental
+anguish it seemed to her a black curtain (much like the smoke of the
+holocaust) dropped down upon her life. All that was actual in her life
+was before the curtain—that is, after her parents’ death; yet all that
+lay behind this curtain did exist for her—only infinitely small and
+infinitely far away. To see (for she did not call it _remembering_)
+what lay behind this barrier, she had to think and think only of
+blackness. Soon was her industry rewarded. Behold, the blackness
+disintegrated and little by little she saw strange scenes in piercing
+clarity, yet all in miniature. She saw these visions as though she
+were above them—say from the height of a church steeple, and she saw
+her own self, a little shaggy girl, walking below.
+
+If no one disturbed her, if Mrs. Hannah did not cuff her for idleness,
+she could watch the movements of these people for hours. There were her
+father and mother, other witches and warlocks, phantom beasts, fiends,
+imps, goblins, fairies, and always her own self. Sometimes these people
+and creatures grew so small they were scarcely more than shifting
+sands. Yet the smaller they grew, the more intense was their actuality.
+Mr. Zelley said that she observed that when these images, visions, or
+what you will, were presented to her almost as large as life, they were
+vapoury and hard to see, but when they were no larger than a grain
+of sand she could see everything—the little frown on her father’s
+forehead, the scales on the imps’ shoulders, her mother’s teeth as she
+smiled, even the nails on the hands of her own self; yet how small must
+have been those hands when the whole body of an adult was no more than
+a grain of sand!
+
+Mr. Zelley, an old and broken man, was commanded to tell further. What
+would she see—on what business would these folk be about? She would
+see naked men and women with goats’ horns on their heads. They danced
+back to back. As they danced, they cried ‘hu hu hura hu,’ in the manner
+of witch-people. She would see the sacrifice of a black kid, and the
+crucifixion of the sacred wafer. Did she ever see the Devil himself?
+Witch-people often select one of themselves to be, as it were, high
+priest in their infernal synagogue. Him they call devil. Such a one
+she often saw. He was young and lusty and dressed in green leaves.
+When they danced their sarabands, no one jumped as high as he. He was
+a pretty man and women loved him. It was only on Black Sabbath he had
+such power over men and women. At other times he was a cordwainer.
+
+This devil that she saw was but a mock devil. Did she never see that
+Scriptural Devil—that Foul Fiend Lucifer? Ah, that she could never
+quite recall—not even with the powerful help of her strange minute
+images. It is true that after hours of application she would sometimes
+see a woman whom she knew to be her mother walking through great oak
+woods (mistletoe-infested) and with her, clinging to her skirts,
+was a child. The child was her own self. A great light pierced the
+green gloom of the forest and where it fell stood a man. He was an
+aristocrat, carried a small rapier with the hilt of which he toyed; he
+was dressed in green velvet, had a handsome, ruddy face, and loving
+blue eyes. Nor had he horns, she said, and if a tail, he kept it to
+himself; but his shoes she noticed were unsightly, as though contrived
+to accommodate clubbed foot or cloven hoof.
+
+To him her mother knelt, and the child knelt also. The mother said
+she had a little servant for him, who she promised would obey him in
+all things. ‘What shall I do with so little a one?’ But he caressed
+her with his hands. His touch was cold as ice. Even to remember that
+touch raised the gooseflesh upon her. It was searing as the hands of
+Death. She never saw this particular scene enacted before her without
+experiencing a physical shock—pleasant and yet repellent. Then she
+could see the child accept the Book the man offered her, and she always
+made a mark in the Book with blood drawn from her own arm. But the
+end of this particular and much-loved vision was always the same and
+always disappointing, for she saw herself and her mother sitting by the
+hearth. Her mother was stirring the pot and as she stirred she talked,
+telling the story of a little girl who had walked with her mother in a
+great wood, had met the Devil, and had sworn to serve him. So it was
+Doll Bilby never could be sure whether or not she had actually promised
+to serve the Foul Fiend and had made her blood-mark in his Book, or
+whether it was but a tale told by her mother.
+
+At first she felt no terror of the strange phantasies which, waking
+and sleeping, were always before her eyes, but as she grew to young
+womanhood, this uncertainty as to her true status came greatly to worry
+her. If she had indeed signed the Book of Hell, then was she utterly
+damned, and there was no hope for her. If she had not, then might
+she, by prayer, watchfulness, etc., escape into Paradise. Thus she
+endured great anguish of spirit. At last the Soul, which ever turns
+and struggles in the heart of man, turned uneasily within her and she
+tried to forget all the evil which she remembered—even the voice of her
+mother, crying out piteously to her from the midst of flame.
+
+Then Conscience—that gift from God to man—raised _its_ head, and she
+lay and moaned upon her bed, listening to the holy voice of Conscience,
+asking her over and over, to her utter weariness, what have you
+done—what have you done? So she applied herself with burning intensity
+to the ways of religion, and it was then, said Mr. Zelley, he first
+came to ponder upon her, although she told him nothing of herself or
+of her past until some years later. But all her pious exercises were
+performed without that pleasure which the good Christian habitually
+manifests, but rather with the terror of a lost soul. Mr. Zelley
+kept a diary, and in that diary he wrote (Doll being at that time
+in her sixteenth or even possibly in her seventeenth year) a wanton
+suggestion, ‘I mark with interest the religious fructuations of Miss D.
+B. but fear she fruits without roots, and but let a man, perhaps, Titus
+Thumb, come into her life by the door, and then shall God but pass out
+by the window ...’ and more light and blasphemous talk, suggesting
+slyly that there may be some resemblance between the carnal love of
+body and the spirit love of soul.
+
+
+3
+
+_A good young man is taken in a witch’s net._
+
+This Titus Thumb, to whom Mr. Zelley referred, was the oldest child
+and only son of Deacon Ephraim Thumb, whose lands lay south of and
+adjoining to the lands of Mr. Bilby. There had always been intimacy
+between the two farms, for the men of one helped the men of the other
+at harvesting, planting, and building. The two women were gossips.
+The two men were cronies. Titus had been much away because he was a
+scholar at the new college in Cambridge. For one year he was home again
+to help in the opening-up of certain new lands. He was a studious
+youth who hoped in time to prepare himself for the ministry of God.
+This, however, never came to pass, for God willed otherwise, and,
+on completing his studies at Cambridge, he remains there, known to
+hundreds of young Latinists as ‘Tutor Thumb.’
+
+He was a young man of special parts and handsome person. He would be a
+minister and his father was rich. The wenches of the village flocked
+to him like moths to flame, ignoring often in the exuberance of the
+chase (for they were unmannerly and bold to him) proper female conduct.
+They mocked him among themselves, saying he was his mother’s darling or
+cosset; that he would never seek out a woman for himself. They would
+torment him, pulling him behind doors and kissing him, pushing their
+bodies against him when he could not escape them, etc., etc. For which
+wanton conduct they were well served, for he would have none of them,
+and, keeping the fifth commandment well in mind, stayed close to his
+parents’ house.
+
+He had two younger sisters, born at one time, for they were twins. They
+were sad and puny children, and many who saw them wondered that God had
+seen fit to cut His cloth so close—that is, it seemed to many that He
+had but enough material (brains, bones, spirits, hair, vitals, etc.)
+to make one proper child, yet out of this little He had made two. In
+answer to this questioning of Divine Wisdom, Mr. Zelley said no one
+body could have endured as many diseases and ills as the Thumb twins
+were heir to. Perhaps it was as well to divide up the maladies as well
+as the strength. Labour had a falling sickness. She would stiffen with
+a horrid din, foam, and go into convulsions. Nor was Sorrow of much
+hardier stock. She was subject to nightmares and other delusions (which
+Mr. Kleaver insisted arose from a cold stomach). Their mother vexed
+herself greatly over them, and where another woman might think it well
+if the miserable things but made a good end and returned early to that
+God Who had sent them thus poorly fortified into the world, she was
+always calling upon Mr. Kleaver or Goody Greene to dose them, or Mr.
+Zelley to pray over them. They were pretty children with soft brown
+eyes and yellow hair, fine and finicky, but their limbs were miserably
+thin and their bellies somewhat swollen.
+
+Mrs. Thumb told them not to play with Bilby’s Doll. She feared the
+girl because her foster mother said she was a witch. Like most sickly
+children, they were poorly trained in obedience. They met Bilby’s Doll,
+whenever they could, by the willow brook which separated the two farms.
+Of these meetings, however, they said little or nothing. The mother
+often heard them whispering and laughing to each other, and, because
+she would hear them talk of Mistress Dolly, she knew they saw her.
+As they were too feeble to be whipped or even shaken, she had little
+control over them.
+
+She would have been vexed to know that often her husband, sitting at
+the Black Moon Tavern with Mr. Bilby, planned that in due time this
+same girl, whom Mrs. Thumb considered too dangerous even to cast an
+eye upon the twins, should marry the handsome Titus. On such occasions
+Mr. Bilby (although he would clap him on the back, and protest his
+friendship) always put him off—Doll was but a child, not old enough to
+marry. She had the immature body of a girl of twelve. Give her time and
+she would grow. Deacon Thumb would not be put off. Was she not sixteen
+at the youngest? Had not his own mother married before that?
+
+He was most cupidous. He wanted his son to become heir to the fine
+estate of Bilby. He did not heed what his wife said of danger. He cared
+more that his son should have a great property in this world than that
+his soul should be saved for the next. He was not an evil man, for
+he was a deacon in the Church. He was a heedless man, and too easily
+dismissed as gossip the true stories his wife forever whispered in his
+ear, in regard to this same Doll.
+
+Mrs. Bilby was anxious that the girl should marry and so be out of the
+house. One day she said, ‘What shall we ever do with your Doll? There’s
+not a man in the town that would marry her.’ Mr. Bilby said that every
+unmarried man in the town would be glad to get her. Mrs. Bilby said,
+‘You mean they would be glad to get a slice off your meadows.’ He said
+he would box her ears for her. She said Doll would be lucky if she got
+herself a vagabond, or a widowed man, or an old man of eighty. Mr.
+Bilby boxed her ears and went down to the tavern. Then he told Deacon
+Thumb that, although it broke his heart even to think of parting with
+his treasure, yet was marriage the one and only proper state for woman,
+and he would put her happiness even before his own. Moreover, his
+wife still hated the girl, even more than she had the night she first
+saw her, and although a good woman (and very handsome), yet she was
+hard. He said he had just boxed her ears and suggested that he was now
+willing to talk of the marriage settlement. He would do something very
+handsome by Doll. ‘For God knows,’ he said, ‘she is dear to me.’
+
+
+4
+
+_In spite of the Warnings of his Better Nature a young man looks
+covetously to Bilby’s Doll._
+
+On certain days the men of the two farms combined their labours, then
+Doll brought to her foster father his midday dinner. To suit his fancy
+she would bring food for herself also. This food she would eat quickly
+and without speaking to any one, keeping close to Mr. Bilby. On those
+harvest days, when the sun was bright on the stubble and heat shimmered
+in the air, the shade beneath the oaks was grateful. Doll Bilby, in the
+bright dresses her foster father bought for her, looked as fresh within
+this shade as one of those little summer flowers that go down before
+the scythes of harvesters. This Titus noticed, and he knew, although
+never a word had been spoken to him, that his father wished the match
+and his mother opposed it.
+
+Also he noticed that the young woman, although so small, was made in
+a neat and most pleasing manner. She was more dainty, more finicky in
+her cut than the big English girls. He often thought, as he stretched
+himself to rest upon the earth, that to the eye of a man of rare
+discernment such delicacy and small perfection might give more pleasure
+than more opulent charms, yet he never went so far as to say that he
+himself was that discerning man. Likewise it pleased him that she was
+shy before him, for he had been over-courted. When he would stretch
+his body along the ground close to where she sat, she would gaze
+unsmilingly at him out of her wild, troubled eyes, and something in
+that gaze—some necromancy—stirred his blood, so that at nights he felt
+desire for her, and often dreamed impossible things of her.
+
+During all that year of harvest he had no thought for another one but
+only of Bilby’s wicked Doll. He knew the stories of her—for his mother
+was forever at his elbow whispering things. He knew of her foreign
+birth, how she had once blasted an unborn child, how she and Goody
+Greene had afflicted Mrs. Bilby some years ago, making her vomit pins
+and fur (for to such proportions had the story of the woman’s illness
+already grown), and he could see for himself how she bewitched her
+foster father out of his seven senses.
+
+As he gazed upon her sometimes the marrow grew cold in his bones. He
+thought if he were a wise and Christian man, he would have none of
+her in spite of his own father’s cupidity. In his heart he, like his
+mother, feared her. He could not understand the power she, without
+effort, had over him, for the very sight of her coming across the hot
+fields of noon threw him into a cold, dismal, unnatural sweat. Now
+was his heart set towards this marriage, but he looked with dread as
+well as joy to that day which should unite her to him. He believed
+that whatever her secret might be she should deliver it up to him on
+her bridal. Half he was persuaded that he would find that she, like
+Sara in the Book of Tobit, had a demon lover, who would strangle any
+bridegroom, nor had he an angel or a fish’s liver, with which to
+protect himself.
+
+
+5
+
+_A malignant black Bull leads all astray. Young Thumb fears Doll and
+suspects the creature is her Familiar._
+
+The Thumbs had a young black bull, which, with other neat cattle and
+quick stock, they had out from England on the ship Fawnley. This bull
+was a wanderer, breaking stout fences, and seeking out his own pleasure
+among his neighbours’ corn fields, cabbage plots, and herds.
+
+On the last day of April, Ahab, the bull, loosed himself, and climbing
+a high hedge of stumps, which looked strong enough to hold any creature
+but an angel from Heaven, he set forth. Having crossed many pastures
+and trampled down valuable rye, he came to the banks of the River Inch,
+where it formed the northern boundary of the Bilby farm. The men were
+far away burning brush. Mrs. Bilby was at her churn in the milk-house.
+Doll, a shiftless wench, was loitering by the river’s edge, and there
+she came across the bull. He was knee-deep among the cowslips. Seeing
+her, he threatened playfully with his short horns, and set off as fast
+as he could trot with a bunch of yellow flowers dangling from his blue
+lips.
+
+[Illustration: Bull eating]
+
+She knew the animal to be of great value, and that she must quickly
+give warning of his liberty lest he escape into the forest, and, being
+set upon by savages or the _feræ naturæ_ of the place, become but meat
+in the stomachs of those little schooled to appreciate his worth. She
+ran quickly back to the house, calling that Black Ahab was loose and
+she had seen him head for the forest. Mrs. Hannah, rushing from the
+milk-house, caught the girl by the arm, shook her angrily because the
+cows were up and ready for milking, and she was late to her work. She
+would not let her run to the upland fields where the men burned brush,
+nor to the Thumbs’ farm so that the creature might be caught. She flung
+her milking-stool and her pail at her feet, and told her to be about
+her own business, for if she had done as she should have done—that
+is, if she had made cheese all the afternoon, instead of loitering
+about the pastures—she never would have seen Ahab or known that he had
+escaped. Doll sat upon her stool and bent herself silently to her work.
+
+On his return in the evening, Mr. Bilby was angry to find that no word
+had been sent to his neighbour in regard to the loss of his creature.
+Nor did Doll tell him that it was his wife’s and not her fault. Partly
+because she was ashamed that he thought her responsible for the loss,
+and partly because she was a wild girl who loved to run about, she
+joined the searching party, made up of the men of the two households.
+
+They searched the pastures and the ploughed lands, the fields, the
+meadows. There was no place else to search but the forest, for Ahab
+was utterly gone. They searched the forest until it was black night,
+following the snappings of twigs, blowings, stampings. Not once did
+they see the body of the black bull. Doll kept to her foster father’s
+heels. Her dress and hands were torn. Her feet soaked with wet. She
+often called, and in a lovely voice, ‘Ahab ... Ahab.’ As often as she
+cried, Titus knew her whereabouts, and took himself to her side. For
+on that black night it was she and not the mischievous bull that he
+was pursuing. He thought how heavy was the night, how awful in their
+majesty the woods, and how wild and small the dark goblin-child. So
+he prayed at the same moment that God might deliver his soul from her
+soul, and her body unto his.
+
+Weary and disheartened at last, all turned towards home. But Doll had
+lost Mr. Bilby, who had started back with Deacon Thumb. Titus, amazed
+and delighted to find her alone, walked by her side. Doll bitterly
+reproached herself that she had not given warning in time. To comfort
+her Titus said it was only his and his father’s fault because they
+could not keep the beast in bonds. To his amazement he found that it
+was not with their loss she was concerned, but only with the fortunes
+or misfortunes of the wretched bull. He thought, has this woman a
+familiar, and is it that accursed Ahab? So his marrow froze in his
+bones.
+
+Thinking that she was indeed no bigger than one of those little goblins
+that live by the hob and bring good fortune to those who are kind to
+them, and also how there was much about her shape to please a man of
+rare discernment, he would have touched her with his hands (witch or
+no witch) and supported her weariness through the rough dark pasture
+lands. If she would accept this much from him, it was possible (for the
+night was May night when all young men for hundreds of years have been
+allowed special license from their sweethearts) she would permit more
+and more, so that the day’s vexations might end joyously. Many times
+had he felt a vital spark pass from her to him, and he could not but
+believe that she was conscious of it as well as he. Doll seemed not to
+realize his intent. As in the dark he approached his hands to her, she
+floated from him. Before her home was reached he came to fancy she had
+no body, or that by some charm (strong as that charm she had worked to
+bind him to her) she now had made a barrier about herself which he had
+not the physical strength to break.
+
+He thought of Sara and her loving demon, Asmodeus, and wondered if
+such a fiend might not now be protecting her. And he wished he had
+never heard that holy story, for Sara, according to Sacred Writ, had
+seven husbands and each young man in turn had been strangled upon his
+marriage bed by the fiend Asmodeus, who loved her.
+
+
+6
+
+_A young Christian witnesses an Awful Metamorphosis and shoots a
+bullet, but not a silver bullet._
+
+The young man’s bodily fatigue was great, and his soul tormented. It
+grieved him to think that when at last he had gotten Doll Bilby by
+herself (and that upon a May night) it had profited him nothing. That
+night he could not sleep, but lay hot and lustful upon his bed. When he
+believed day about to dawn, he got himself into breeches, jerkin, hose,
+and shoes, and, having drunk a jorgen of ale, he went again to the
+search of Ahab.
+
+Because there might be danger in the forest, he took with him his
+bastard musket. He came out of the house. It was not yet day. There was
+some light from the east, but it was a specious and unreal light, and
+the mists and fog from up over the sea were heavy and blue. He misliked
+the day.
+
+First he looked about his own cow-pens and then about the cow-pens of
+his neighbour, for he knew the creature loved the company of his own
+kind and if alive would be like to return to them. There was neither
+bull, nor sign of bull. With his musket upon his shoulder, he took a
+path through Mr. Bilby’s meadows and came down to the smooth waters of
+the River Inch. He thought, ‘This Ahab is a greedy drinker. As soon as
+the sun is up he will get to the river and gorge himself with water.’
+The fogs lay heaviest over the river, and they lay flat and white like
+piled counterpanes. Steadily the watery light grew from the east. He
+thought he would sit upon a boulder under a willow tree. The sun would
+soon shine out and drink up the fogs and dews of night. He kept his
+bastard musket on his knees, partly because the strangeness of the
+twilight vexed him, and partly because he knew that not far from him—no
+farther than he could shoot with his gun—was a path from out of the
+woods down which wild animals often came early to drink from the river.
+It was down this path he hoped to see Ahab, and in the meantime he
+might get venison for his mother’s larder. He sat quietly, and a doe
+stepped out, followed by twin fawns. But these he would not shoot, for
+their grace and smallness reminded him of Doll. Everything reminded
+him of Doll—the birds that sang, the flowers in the grasses, even the
+mystery and silence of the dawn. Yet these things should not have
+reminded him of a woman, but of her Maker.
+
+In time he heard a crashing and breaking of twigs, and laughed to
+himself that he had read the bull’s thoughts so well, for nothing
+that lived in the forest would make such a commotion; only a
+domestic barnyard animal would carry himself so noisily. Nor was he
+disappointed, for out of the fogs and through the brush came the young
+bull, looking vast and large in the unreal light of dawn. He thought to
+let the creature settle himself to his drinking and then to steal up
+from behind him and catch his halter. So he sat quietly until he saw
+with astonishment that what he believed to be an Indian was astride
+him, and, having rigged reins to the halter, was endeavouring to turn
+him from the water.
+
+To see a rider on Ahab did not surprise him, for he knew the bull had
+often carried even his little sisters, the puny Labour and Sorrow.
+It did astonish and anger him to see a savage in possession of his
+father’s property. So he called out roughly and forbade the man to turn
+the creature away from him. What next happened he never truly knew,
+for he was sure that the tawny (which at the instant seemed a large
+and ferocious brave) jumped from the bull’s back and made at him with
+his tomahawk. Titus knelt upon one knee and fired. In spite of the
+fogs and bushes that partly confused his sight, he took his aim most
+accurately against a bit of beadwork above the heart of his enemy. Now
+he saw this boy or man most clearly, the deerskin fringe to his jerkin,
+the feathers, the dark, angry face, the tomahawk, the patterns made by
+beads, and he knew that his aim was accurate and good; yet, even as
+the bullet sped to its mark, the Indian was there no more, and instead
+stood Doll Bilby with her hands clasped to her heart.
+
+He knew the bullet went through her. When he first saw her, she was
+still staggering from the impact, but, when he reached her side and
+pulled away her hands (crying out and lamenting that he had killed
+her), there was no mark of blood upon her grey gown, and she assured
+him in a weak and frightened voice that she was unhurt. This gown Doll
+had on that day was made of strong fustian, and, as Mrs. Hannah always
+said, it had not a hole nor tear in it. Yet the next time Doll wore it
+there was discovered above the heart a minute and perfect patch, put
+on, evidently, to cover a hole no larger than a sixpence.
+
+So great and so unreasonable was Titus’s love for Doll, he at first
+hardly considered the awful metamorphosis he had witnessed. Instead he
+was sick to think how close she had been to death.
+
+As this story (which has just been set down in its true form) spread
+through the village, it grew incredibly larger in the mouths of certain
+people, and yet in the mouths of others it dwindled down into nothing.
+For the former of these insisted that Doll did not come alone, but
+was escorted by a vast troop of infernals, witches, etc., and that
+Ahab spoke to his master, making sundry infantile observations, such
+as might occur to the intelligence of a beast. Those who would make
+nothing of the story (and among these was Mr. Zelley) said Titus was
+no solid rock upon which to build the truth, and that his fancy had
+ridden him. There never had been an Indian upon the bull’s back, only
+Doll. He never had seen the beads, fringes, tomahawk. When he shot, his
+aim was confused and he had gone wide the mark.
+
+Mr. Zelley, in his diary, quotes Scripture in regard to this curious
+incident, saying in part that Our Lord warns us against the putting of
+new wine into old bottles, lest the new wine prove too strong and burst
+the bottles. ‘So a torrent of feeling—especially when arising from the
+passions—is of the greatest danger to a weak container, and young Mr.
+Thumb is that weak container.’
+
+At that moment, however, Titus had but one thought, and that was that
+at last the wench was in his arms, for she was so weakened by fear (or
+perhaps from the actual shock of the bullet) she could hardly stand. He
+comforted her, stroking her hair, kissing her, and saying over and over
+that he would have died rather than hurt a hair of her head. Concerning
+the fact that, but a second before, she had been in other shape and
+enjoying a different gender, he said nothing, for he thought that she
+might wish to remain mute concerning the matter, and then he thought:
+‘It was because of kindness, at least if not towards me, towards the
+bull, that made this modest young female assume another shape. How
+could she, as a white girl, have ventured to the forest and found
+Ahab?’ So he said nothing. Now that at last his arms were about her,
+he felt none of the fire and anguish he had endured the night before;
+rather, it seemed to him, that he was caressing and comforting one of
+his own sisters. So he set her sideways on the bull, and took her to
+her own house.
+
+By the time he had reached his father’s farm, he was once more swept by
+such inordinate and passionate desire he could not believe that earlier
+in the same morning he had kissed and comforted her, thinking her only
+a child—not even a witch and much less a woman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+1
+
+_Young Thumb dwindles. The witch torments him and her foster father
+discerns that she is not nor ever can be a Christian woman._
+
+From the day on which Ahab was lost and recovered, Titus began a secret
+courting of Doll. Witch or no witch he would have no other. On the
+one side of him was his father, winking at him and pointing out the
+richness of Mr. Bilby’s fields, the weight of his cattle, the size of
+his barns. On the other side of him was his fond mother, whispering
+and whispering, ‘The girl’s a witch, she’ll come to no good end,
+she’ll hang yet, the girl’s a witch ... witch ... witch.’ Of all these
+matrimonial plans Mrs. Hannah knew nothing. She saw that Titus was
+much about the house, but, being very proud of her beauty (which was
+remarkable in a woman of her years), she believed in her own heart that
+she was the reason for the young man’s constant presence. She could not
+believe so handsome and sought after a young man could see anything to
+desire in the ridiculous hobgoblin-child. Doll Bilby flouted him at
+every turn, yet was he always after her, hungry as a cat for fish.
+
+Many noticed, even by June and still more by July, that young Mr. Thumb
+was suffering from some malady that sapped strength from body, color
+from face, and dulled the eye. He was a listless worker in the fields,
+leaning upon his scythe, scanning the horizon, sighing, and weakly
+returning to his work. He ate little and slept less, so that his flesh
+fell away enormously, and, where four months before had stood a hale
+young man, now stood a haggard. He would mutter to himself, sit out in
+night vapours to consider the moon as it shone on the distant roof of
+Bilby’s house.
+
+Thus things went from bad to worse. His mother noticed his condition
+and guessed its cause. She brooded over the young man, and this made
+him vexatious and bilious. When his little sisters had met (as they
+sometimes did, in spite of their mother) ‘Mistress Dolly’ by the willow
+brook, he would beg them to tell him everything the young woman said
+to them. How did they play? Did they build a little house of pebbles?
+Had they made dolls from stones? They would never tell him, but ran
+quickly away. The truth came out later. Doll amused them with stories
+of salamanders, elves, fairies, etc. They feared their mother would be
+angry if she knew—for she often had said that all the _good_ stories
+were in the Bible, and if a story could not be found there it was proof
+that it was not good. So the twins ran away and told nothing of their
+visits with Doll. They often talked to each other, however, after they
+were in bed, and went on making up wicked things like those she had
+told them.
+
+All her life Mrs. Thumb swore she knew her son’s distress was from no
+ordinary cause. If that were true, people asked her, how did she come
+to give consent to her son’s marriage with this same Doll? When she was
+an ancient lady, living in her son’s house at Cambridge, she once said:
+‘I saw my son like to die, and he swore there was but one cure for
+him—that is, marriage with this young woman whom our magistrates later
+judged to be a witch. Therefore I said little to oppose the marriage.
+Then, too, at that time I placed much confidence in the wisdom of Mr.
+Zelley. He stood at my right hand, saying, “The girl is innocent. It
+will be a fine match.” Titus would cry out in his sleep for this
+witch-girl. How could I deny him when I thought it the only way to save
+his life?’
+
+Hannah raged when she learned that the marriage was arranged (although
+nothing yet had been said to Doll). Bilby could not fathom her anger,
+for he thought she would be pleased to get the girl out of the house.
+He did not know that his wife believed herself the reason for Titus’s
+mopings and pinings. Indeed she had ordered for herself a new red
+riding-hood from Mr. Silas Gore, of Boston, so that she might have
+finery with which to fascinate the young man.
+
+At last Doll knew she was to marry the good young man, for her foster
+father told her so. He told her roughly, for his heart broke to think
+of losing her to another. Sorrow made his tongue unkind. She would not
+listen to him, but, laughing, clung about his waist, saying she would
+never leave him, that he was the only man she could ever love. He
+wanted to keep her with him forever, but he knew that she was a strange
+girl, not like others, and he believed that if she were married she
+would become less secret and, having a house and children of her own,
+she would be happier.
+
+Then, too, he knew that his wife was cruel to her, and he thought that
+it would be better for her to live under a roof where there was only
+love. It was in vain that he told her that she was now a woman grown,
+and it was time that she went about the business of women—that is, the
+bearing and raising of children. Did she have a deep aversion for her
+handsome and godly young neighbour? Would she not be proud some day
+to be a minister’s wife? No, no, never, never—she only wanted to be
+his dear foster child. He hardened his heart against her, and unwound
+her arms from about his waist. He told her to marry young Thumb, or to
+think up better reasons why she should not. He would not have such an
+ungrateful, stubborn woman about his house. If she did not wish to do
+as he wished, she could find another place to live. He never meant such
+hard words. He acted for her own best good. He pushed her from him, and
+made off to the fields.
+
+She overtook him in a field of flax where the flowers were even bluer
+than the rare summer sky. The air was heavy with the murmur of bees.
+She flung herself on her knees and caught him by the long blue smock he
+wore.
+
+‘Father,’ she cried, ‘wait, wait, I beg of you.’ She put her hands
+over her face and wept. He could have wept himself to see her thus.
+He hardened his heart and would have pushed by. She cried out she had
+something to tell him, so he waited silently, but without looking at
+her, for he was afraid that at the sight of her his heart would melt.
+She seized him by the hem of his smock and began to talk in a hoarse
+voice and a roaring voice like nothing he had ever heard out of her
+before. She had something to tell him, she said. There were reasons
+why she could not marry, especially not a young man who wished to be a
+minister. She feared she was not a Christian woman. She looked up at
+him from the ground, and he looked down upon her. Their eyes met, and
+in one horrid instant Mr. Bilby realized what it was she meant, why
+she feared she might not be a Christian woman. Of Evil she remembered
+everything, and at that moment he knew it.
+
+He did not dare question her. He did not dare know what she knew. He
+essayed to comfort her and said he did not care who her parents really
+were. It mattered no more to him than who might be the sire of the
+cat that caught the mice in his barn. He also said what was not true,
+for he assured her that what one may have done or promised at a very
+tender age had no importance in the eyes of God. So he talked vaguely,
+and made off to his labours.
+
+She left him and went to a secret spot she had among the birch trees on
+the hillside. She was not comforted, and her heart was hard set against
+the thought of marriage.
+
+Those things which Doll told Mr. Bilby frightened him. He went straight
+to his neighbours that same afternoon and said the time had come when
+Titus, with his own tongue and in his own body, should do a little
+courting. Titus said how could he when Doll was never a flea-hop from
+her foster father’s heels? Thus it was arranged. Doll, that very night,
+should be left alone in her father’s house—Bilby and wife should go
+to Thumb’s. Titus would come to her, court her, and persuade her to
+marriage. After a sufficient time, all would return to Bilby’s and
+celebrate the happy betrothal with sack-posset, hymns, psalms, prayers,
+etc.
+
+To this Titus and all agreed. Even Doll had nothing to say, but at her
+foster father’s bidding she put on her most wanton dress—a giddy dress
+of scarlet tiffany such as no pious woman would wish to possess.
+
+
+2
+
+_A woman is seized by a Frenzy. And how a man may court without profit._
+
+Now, when she found herself alone, she ran back and forth, back and
+forth, through the house. She locked and barred everything. She locked
+the cupboards and the doors and shuttered the windows. She went to the
+attic and locked the trunks, the boxes, the cribs, and the cases. She
+went to the cellar and bolted the door. Doors she could neither bolt
+nor bar, she barricaded. Even when this was done, she could not stop
+her strange running round and round the house, sometimes turning in
+small circles like a dog gone mad. She said over and over to herself,
+‘I must be a witch, for I can feel myself weaving a charm.’ So she ran
+fast through the house, but there was nothing more to lock.
+
+It was not yet seven o’clock and the evening was still light. Yet so
+closely had she barred and shuttered everything, the house inside was
+dark as midnight. Then she got old blankets, and in the end, in her
+desperation, new blankets, and tried to stuff the gaping chimney hole
+in the fire-room so that the whole house should be utterly barred and
+tight. But all the time (as she afterwards told Mr. Zelley) she would
+ask herself, ‘Why, why do I do these things?’ In the midst of her most
+desperate work with the chimney hole, she would stop and begin to run
+through the house—unable to stop herself. She thought to herself that
+she was working some charm or rather some charm worked within her. She
+was powerless before her great need to run back and forth, back and
+forth, through the locked and barred house.
+
+Titus Thumb, dressed as though for a bridal and carrying a nosegay of
+lad’s-love and a turkey-leather psalm book for gifts, came proudly to
+the house, knocking to be let in. Doll heard him, for she was crouched
+upon the cold hearth of the fire-room, striving to stuff the chimney
+hole. She thought, ‘I will let him in, and then he can do this thing
+better than I.’
+
+Titus was astonished to find the house dark and his lady’s hair a
+ragged black mat on her shoulders, her gay scarlet gown disordered and
+torn open at the throat, as though she had but recently wrestled with
+an enemy. And her face astonished him, for her cheeks were bright red.
+Fuller and more beautiful than ever before, her eyes glittered indeed
+like a goblin’s and her wide mouth was pulled up at the corners in a
+wicked but most provocative smile. She, in the dark house, seemed more
+like imp or puck than human woman. All that was human in him—that is,
+intelligence, conscience, reason, and so forth—was afraid and bade
+him turn back; yet all that was animal in him—that is, the hunger and
+desire of his body—urged him to enter. So he entered.
+
+Already that awful necessity that had made her run so madly through the
+house was gone. She explained the blankets by the cold hearth, saying
+that they were damp, and that she had planned to build a fire and dry
+them out. So he built a fire. She explained her dishevelled condition.
+She had heard a rat in the cellar and had taken a poker and hunted for
+him. Could he not at that moment hear the rat scampering in the cellar?
+So he took a light and a poker and went to the cellar, and Doll, a
+little ashamed and frightened, quickly ordered her clothes and hair,
+and unlocked everything she could before he returned. Yes, he said,
+he found a rat and he had killed it. This surprised her, for she had
+really heard no rat, and the thought came to her that perhaps the Devil
+had sent that rat to excuse her conduct.
+
+The young man sat on the settle with his head in his hands and prayed
+God to deliver his soul from the woman’s soul, and her body unto his.
+At last he spoke to her, his face turned away from her. He told her
+that she knew why he was come. He wished to marry her, and that he
+would be to her a true and loving husband. No, she said, she could not
+marry him. He was surprised, for Mr. Bilby had told no one of the young
+woman’s aversion to marriage. He had understood that he had only to
+ask and she would assent. He told her that it was all settled—the very
+spot on which their house should be built. How could she now so coldly
+say no? She only said again that she could not marry him—nor any other.
+‘If that is so,’ he said, ‘I’ll take my hat and go.’ But why, if she
+had no idea of marrying him, had she so kept him at her heels? She had
+not kept him at her heels. She was always trying to rid herself of him.
+She knew that was not true. The very way she drew back from him was
+the surest encouragement a man could have. She said she thought he was
+talking nonsense. Her eyes glittered at him, round and bright in the
+firelight, like a cat’s.
+
+He was afraid. He got up. He said again that he would take his hat
+and go. ‘I wish you would,’ said Doll. They could not find his hat. It
+seems that, while Doll was straightening herself and ordering the house
+(Titus at the moment ratting in the cellar), she had by chance picked
+up his hat, with many other things, such as the sooty blankets, and had
+stuck them under her own bed. So now they could not find his hat.
+
+The young fellow was afraid, and now, as never before, he believed she
+was a witch. His blood pumped through him as though about to burst the
+veins; he knew that she wished this hat to work further charms upon
+him. But if she were so set upon charming him, making him her slave,
+why would she now have none of him? Why should she torture him, making
+him love her past all human endurance, and yet now so coldly dismiss
+him?
+
+Doll said she was very sorry about the hat. ‘Oh, it is not the hat,’ he
+cried in despair, his head again in his two hands, ‘but, my dear Doll,
+why will you so torture me? Have I ever been anything but kind and
+respectful to you? Look what you have done. A year ago I was twice the
+man I now am. You have done it. You’ve sucked the strength and manhood
+out of my veins.’ Then he talked strangely so that she could not at
+first understand him. At last she understood him well. He believed that
+she had cast a witch spell on him, and had thus made him love her so
+beyond all reason. For, as he frankly told her, she really was not so
+wonderful nor half so beautiful, etc., as he had come to think her.
+He said he could remember back three years ago when he thought her a
+scrawny, rather ugly, little thing with too big a mouth.
+
+All this made her very angry. She jumped up and down in her rage—more
+like an imp than ever—and screamed at him to be gone. She ran into her
+own room and came back with his hat—for she had guessed where it really
+was, but had not found an opportunity to get it for him. She jumped
+up and clapped the hat onto his head, pulling it down so sharply over
+his ears that she bent them, and continued to scream, ‘Go! Go! Go!’ He
+grabbed her roughly by the arm, called her witch, hellcat, succubus.
+She turned and bit his wrist, so that it was marked for days. He pulled
+her off him, shook her with great fury, and flung her from him so that
+her head struck against the settle and she moaned in pain. Her plight
+touched his heart infinitely, and he knew that, witch or no witch, she
+was his dear, his own girl.
+
+So the parents and foster parents, returning, found them. The man,
+a valiant officer in the militia, a scholar, and the heir to a
+fine estate, was convulsed with weeping and sobbing. The girl lay
+terror-stricken in the corner, as harmless as a trapped rabbit. Mr.
+Bilby had no idea that Titus had flung her into this corner. She was
+a strange child, and he thought she had picked it out for herself.
+He pitied the terrible (if somewhat unmanly) grief of the young man,
+and swore that, in spite of Doll’s ridiculous and, he felt, unnatural
+objections, the marriage must go ahead.
+
+Mrs. Thumb took her son home, and Mr. Bilby took Doll to bed, and he
+comforted her with that more than female solicitude that a man often
+shows towards children or women in distress.
+
+Mrs. Hannah was in a rage when she found her fine blankets blackened
+with dirty soot. Nor would Doll offer an explanation to her foster
+mother, although afterwards she told Mr. Zelley everything.
+
+
+3
+
+_The voice of Hell is heard in the House of the Lord._
+
+Mrs. Thumb went everywhere whispering: ‘Look to my son. Is he not
+bewitched? Look at my boy—so gentle he would not kick a cat, yet you
+all know that once he shot at this Doll Bilby, and but a few nights ago
+he struck her and flung her upon the ground. Then he cried for hours.
+I took him home. Is it according to God and Nature for a man to love
+thus? Hating her, loving her, loving her, hating her. Would God the
+wench were dead, but she is not, and he will marry her.’
+
+Every one thought the girl a witch. She went her own way quietly,
+working as she always did, a little shiftlessly, her mind on other
+things.
+
+The harvest was late that year and heavy. One year Nature would starve
+her stepchildren (for so the colonists felt in the new land) with too
+little, and the next year break their backs with too much. Mr. Bilby,
+harassed with many things, did a wrong thing. He went to Mr. Zelley
+and begged him on the next Sabbath to publish the banns for his foster
+child and young Thumb, and he led Mr. Zelley to believe that Doll had
+assented to these plans.
+
+It may well be that Doll, in some secret way common to witches (that
+is, through some imp or familiar used as spy), really did know that
+upon a certain Sunday the banns were to be read. If she did know, she
+said nothing of this thing to any one, keeping her own dark counsel,
+and working her secret spells. On a Friday Mr. Bilby sickened slightly,
+and upon Saturday he could not touch his proper food, only a cheat-loaf
+she baked with her own hands for him, and a barley gruel. Mrs. Hannah
+always believed—and doubtless with reason—that the young woman was at
+the bottom of this sickening and was endeavouring to keep him from the
+Meeting-House, for when she heard he was set upon going she begged him
+not to go, saying he was too ill, etc., and must be ruled by her, etc.,
+and sit at home in idleness.
+
+But he would not be persuaded, and he went to church as always. She
+rode with him upon the pillion. Mrs. Hannah rode the fat plough horse.
+
+By the windows and doors of the Meeting-House were nailed the grim
+and grinning heads of wolves, freshly slain. In the stocks before the
+Meeting-House were two Quaker women, the one in an extremity of despair
+and cold (for there was some ice upon the ground) and the other
+brazen, screaming out profanities and laughing in her disgrace. Upon
+the roof-walk paced back and forth Captain Buzzey, of the train-band
+troop, beating his drum in great long rolls, summoning all to come and
+worship.
+
+Inside the Church Mrs. Hannah and Doll sat together on the women’s
+side, and Mr. Bilby, as befitted his station in the community, sat
+close to the minister. After certain psalms, prayers, etc., Mr. Zelley
+held forth from the Book of Judith for the space of two hours. There
+were announcements by the clerk, etc., and then Mr. Zelley again
+ascended the scaffold. Couched in proper form, he read how Titus, son
+of Deacon Ephraim Thumb, and Doll, foster child of Jared Bilby, engaged
+themselves for holy wedlock and desired the pronouncement of these
+banns.
+
+His voice was drowned by a sharp and most piteous lamentation. At
+first none knew from where this infernal sound had come. Deacon looked
+to deacon, wife to wife. Mr. Cuppy, the tithing-man, ran up and down
+among the wretched small boys. Mr. Zelley stopped in astonishment,
+looking first up, as if he thought the sound had come from the corn
+crib in the loft of the Church—or from Heaven—and then down, as though
+seeking its source from Hell. Doll Bilby was on her feet, her arms
+outstretched, addressing her foster father. Her voice rose and died
+out. None there could ever repeat what it was she said. That noon, in
+the noon-house, between the two services, men and women got together
+whispering, wondering, and asking each what it was that Bilby’s saucy
+jade had—to her own unending shame and to the great indignity of the
+sacred service—dared to pipe forth.
+
+Mr. Zelley—the least disturbed of all—saw to it that Bilby and his
+beloved Doll be got to horse and to home, without waiting for the
+second service. He was perplexed and harassed by the occurrence, and
+refused to discuss with his deacons what would be a fitting punishment
+for the young woman, although most were agreed that it would be the
+stocks or the pillory. Instead of listening to the discussions in the
+noon-house, he went out of doors and stood before the evil women in the
+stocks, exhorting them in the name of Christ Jesus to repent and to
+be forgiven. Theodate Gookin, a stout child, mocked them and pelted
+them with small apples. This action of the child enraged Mr. Zelley
+more than had the foul blasphemies of the Quakers. He roughly ordered
+Theodate to lay off his own warm overcoat. This he spread kindly upon
+the back of the most insufferable of the blasphemers. By which act of
+charity, he stilled her lying tongue, and reproved the levity of the
+child who would sport about and enjoy himself on the Lord’s Day.
+
+
+4
+
+ _Evil cursing bears bitter fruit. Mr. Bilby, though struck down,
+ swears to the innocency of his Destroyer and makes a Pious End._
+
+Bilby went stiffly to his horse, his mouth drawn, his face grey. His
+wife got on the pillion behind him and soon left Doll (on the fat work
+animal) far behind. When the girl got to the house, she did not seem to
+understand why her foster mother shook her fist, spat, and made at her
+with a warming-pan. She did not seem to know that she had cursed the
+man—that kind man, whom she loved.
+
+Mr. Bilby suffered from a cruel congestion of the lights. Mr. Kleaver
+said from the first there was little chance to save him. For on one
+day came the surgeon, with his saddle-bags stuffed with motherwort and
+goldenrod, and on the next came the minister with his big Bible, and on
+the third day they were like to send for Goody Goochey, the woman who
+had the laying-out of the dead—so sick was he.
+
+But he delayed his passage into eternity, fighting death with hardly
+Christian resignation; for to your true Christian the years spent on
+this world must seem but as the nine months which the child spends in
+the womb. His death-day is in fact his birthday into the kingdom of
+God. Should he fight against death any more than the infant should
+fight against birth?
+
+There were gathered in his sick-chamber night and day rarely less than
+ten or twelve people, praying for the departure of this fell disease,
+or, if this were impossible, they prayed in the hope of giving the
+shrinking soul a heavenward lift.
+
+Mr. Bilby bade them save their breath, and, although his face was
+settling into lines of death and he breathed horribly and with an
+animal roaring, he still begged, as he had from the first, for a sight
+of his child Doll. The room was then cleared of the pious exhorters,
+who returned to the Thumb farm and there prayed and drank rumbullion.
+Only Mr. Kleaver, Mr. Zelley, and the wife remained. Mr. Zelley
+commanded Hannah to find the child, and Hannah, frowning, went away,
+but she came back soon and said she was not about. The truth is the
+woman had struck and cursed the girl so savagely that now, when she
+heard her name called, she did not dare to come.
+
+The doors of the death-chamber were shut and sealed. Camphor was burned
+on the hearth; then the wife stood by her husband’s side, and, in the
+presence of Mr. Zelley and the surgeon, asked him three times and in
+a loud voice whether or not he believed he died of a curse pronounced
+upon him by his foster child. Mr. Bilby rallied his wits, and, in spite
+of the agony of his breathing, he stoutly denied the charge. But some
+(among them Hannah) believe that he was already dead when he seemed to
+speak, and that an evil spirit had succoured Doll by leaping into the
+head of the corpse and thus making answer. For he spoke up in a loud,
+clear voice, and yet one in no way like his own, and the next moment
+he was not only dead, but looked as though he had been dead for a
+half-hour or hour at the least.
+
+
+5
+
+_Doll forswears the God of our Deliverance and embraces Beelzebub who
+prepares (for her instruction) a_ PROCESSION.
+
+The four days Bilby was dying, Doll spent in the hayloft—night and day.
+She had over-heard the farm servants talking, and she knew of what she
+was accused and why it was Hannah would not let her into the house.
+She remembered that strange time when she had run and run through the
+house, working, she knew, a spell, or rather feeling a spell work
+through her, and she was sick to think that perhaps she had some power
+she did not understand, and had really put a charm upon her dear foster
+father when she had not intended. Perhaps it was also true that unknown
+to herself she had bewitched Titus Thumb. None went to her or knew
+where she lay but the youngest of the indentured servants, a good and
+gentle lad. This boy brought her food and water. When it was night he
+went to his poor lodgings in the cow-shed and took a blanket from his
+bed and gave it to her.
+
+From the loft Doll stared down at the house and yard, and could guess,
+by the close attendance of the surgeon and the clergyman and by the
+multitudes gathered to pray, how sick he was. Every morning she saw
+Hannah go early to the dunghill and catch a fowl. This bird Doll knew
+would be laid for warmth at the sick man’s feet, for under the dark
+covers the creature lay quietly and gave off a good and healing warmth,
+yet was no bird imprisoned longer than twenty-four hours lest its heat
+be translated into the chill of death.
+
+On the fourth day—that is, the day on which Mr. Bilby died—Doll
+determined to leave the loft and if possible to find Goody Greene,
+who would at least tell her how her father did. Perhaps Greene might
+stay his sickness, for Doll had more confidence in her and her herbs
+than in Mr. Kleaver and his bleeding-cups. At this time of year the
+woman often went to the Bilby river meadows after an herb called
+‘Love-lies-bleeding,’ so Doll, finding the opportunity to slip out
+unseen by any, got from the loft and decided first to hunt for her
+Sister-in-Evil along the riverbanks. She dared not pass through the
+town.
+
+She sat by the river until sundown, crying long and bitterly. She
+remembered that time Titus had found her there, and cried afresh—for
+even those had been happier days.
+
+Wherever she went she found the flower stems were broke off close to
+the ground, and she saw the print of a small Indian moccasin in the
+mud. She knew that Goody Greene (being a pauper) wore these moccasins
+and that her feet were small, so she followed this trail, and this led
+her to the great forest. Here she paused, for she feared it. But she
+feared the cruel suspicions of her foster mother more, so she took a
+farewell look about her at the pastures and fields, and, finding a
+small path (still seeing here and there a moccasin print), she entered
+boldly.
+
+It would seem, then, that another of those fits of senseless weaving
+back and forth overtook her. She knew the danger of being lost in this
+great wood, and she had not for a long time seen a footprint. Suddenly
+she began to run through the woods on those little paths beaten out by
+animals, hunters, and Indians. She could not pause either to consider
+her direction or to determine what it was she really sought, for she
+had almost forgotten the idea of finding Greene. The sun had set and
+the November night was coming down fast. The gloom and overwhelming
+silence weighed her down. She began to think that she smelt smoke or
+saw the glimmer of a fire. Wherever she looked she could see light
+smouldering in the underbrush. Sometimes she thought there were
+hundreds of tiny Indian encampments, with teepees but a few inches
+high, and, because she knew of Goody Greene’s fondness for Indians, she
+tried to come to these miniature encampments. She also knew that she
+was lost (although this knowledge did not horrify her as it would a
+reasonable person), and not only did she wish the goodwife’s company,
+but she needed the warmth even of the smallest fire, for the night was
+frosty cold.
+
+At last, after much running, sniffing, and circling, she came to a
+small cleared spot, where she always maintained she found a fire
+burning, and over this fire was a great pall of black smoke. So she
+gathered more twigs and fagots, and built up the fire—not knowing that
+she only made a heap of rubbish upon the cold wet ground. At least her
+‘fire’ seemed to warm and comfort her. She lay back upon the moss and
+fell quickly into deep sleep.
+
+After some time, she waked, startled, for she heard her name called.
+‘Bilby’s Doll! cried the voice, ‘Bilby’s Doll!
+
+‘Yes,’ she answered, springing up from her unhappy bed. There was no
+answer to her ‘yes.’ Whatever it was, she considered her ‘fire’ was
+almost out. ‘Who calls?’ she cried, and her voice echoed and the awful
+silence of night mocked at her in solitude.
+
+Then at last, being wide awake, she realized with terror and dismay
+that the voice that called her was none other than that of her dear
+foster father. Yet would he never have called her thus, saying ‘Bilby’s
+Doll,’ but ‘Doll’ only.
+
+Then she knew that he was dead, and that she would never see him
+again. It was his lonely spirit, fresh torn from the earthly body,
+that had stopped this moment on its heavenly flight to cry out to
+her thus sadly. She flung herself, moaning, upon the ground, unable
+to shed a tear. Witches, she knew, have no tears, and she realized
+with horror that her tears had dried up. She began to pray to ‘Dear
+God in Heaven....’ She heard a rustle in the forest, and then low and
+malicious laughter. She stopped her prayer. After a moment of writhing
+and moaning, she prayed again—‘Infinite Master, Lord God of Israel ...
+I never meant to hurt him. He was the only person I have ever loved. I
+never meant to kill him....’ ‘Why, then, did you curse him?’ asked a
+voice, and she again heard malicious laughter. She would have found
+relief for her remorse in tears, but there were no tears, nor did they
+ever come to her again.
+
+[Illustration: Wild tiger]
+
+She felt the presence of a large and probably dangerous animal about,
+so she flung more wood on her ‘fire.’ She listened to its padded feet,
+and told herself it was lynx or wolf, yet in her heart she hoped and
+feared that it might be at last a messenger from that infernal King to
+whom she now was convinced her parents had promised her. For, between
+the moment that she heard a voice call ‘Bilby’s Doll’ and that moment
+in which she had felt a corporeal presence in the wood, she had become
+fully convinced that she was a witch with all the powers that belong
+to such an evil estate.
+
+Slyly she made one last appeal to Jehovah, for she thought that He
+might even for so evil a one as her own self make His awful majesty
+manifest. ‘O God, who seest all things, who rulest above, O Great God
+of Israel, give me a sign, give me a sign....’ Then in her impudence
+she lifted up her impious voice and commanded God, ‘Put back the soul
+of Jared Bilby, for it is not yet gone far and his body is yet warm.
+Do this and I will serve You. Desert me now, and I wash my hands
+of You and Your cruel ways!’ The rustling and the commotion crept
+nearer. No angel this thing which approached her on its belly. She
+stared, expecting to see horned head and grinning demon face. She saw
+nothing. She cried once more to God. The solitude echoed her voice with
+laughter. Then she cried to the powers of Hell below and to the Prince
+of Lies, ‘Great King of Hell, if I serve you, you must serve me’ (for
+she knew this was a stipulation in a witch’s contract). ‘I will do
+anything, sign any book, if you will but give me back the soul of Jared
+Bilby.’ But this poor soul was now in the keeping of angel hosts. Not
+Lucifer himself could snatch it from such guardians. As she thought
+thus, a windy voice cried, ‘Too late, too late.’ ‘Satan, you shall
+give me a sign,’ she cried. And there close to the ground were two
+great cat’s eyes, larger than saucers. They glared at her with a green
+hellish light that transpierced the darkness and her very soul.
+
+She cried out desperately to those eyes, ‘Whoever you are, step forth.
+I will do anything, sign any book. Tell me now, in Satan’s name, is
+there no way back to life for Jared Bilby? For it was I, I, I, who slew
+him—with a witch’s look. Oh, kind spirit, if you are old, I will be
+your daughter; if you are young, I will be your bride—stand forth now
+to me.’
+
+The yellow eyes turned from her as she struggled with her unhallowed
+thoughts, and the thing was gone. Far away, mile after mile, a voice
+no bigger than a sparrow’s cried sadly to her, and in great agony of
+spirit, ‘Bilby’s Doll....’ She thought to run after the voice, to catch
+the naked soul in her hands. Of what avail? Gone already a thousand
+miles. In the littlest voice, no larger than voice of flea or worm, she
+heard once more her foster father cry to her, ‘Bilby’s Doll....’
+
+She knew that, as there are certain forms and incantations for the
+destruction of life, so must there be others for the rekindling of
+it. What had Our Lord said before the tomb of Lazarus? Could she but
+remember the words she herself had said in church—perhaps by repeating
+them backwards she could countermand the curse.
+
+She fell to the ground in an ague, and lay sobbing dryly, exhorting the
+powers of Hell. Twigs snapped in blackness about her. Feet padded in
+silence.
+
+The cold of the night, the terror of her soul, the dearth of food, the
+sorrow of her heart struck her into a stupor from which she could not
+move. Through this stupor, in steady procession, and with much pomp
+and circumstance, a long parade of figures, fiends, witches, warlocks,
+imps, beasts, familiars, satyrs, and even the beautiful chaste Diana
+herself, moved in fleshly form: a wicked, most fantastic procession.
+Goblins were there with faces of cats and owls, salamanders but lately
+crawled from fire. Basilisks were there, serpents, vampires with bats’
+wings and horrid mouths swollen with blood. The pretty pink bodies of
+innocent babes were there, who had died unbaptized, and therefore must
+stand as servants in the halls of Hell, and with them were pucks and
+pugs.
+
+After them rolled through the forest a great orange cloud—like an old
+and tarnished fire—no longer heat-giving. At first her eye could make
+nothing of it. Then she saw projecting through the dun vapours were
+naked legs and arms, bits of bodies, and drawn and skull-like heads
+with tortured eyes. These were they the French burned at Mont Hoël in
+Brittany. Although she might not know them, her parents were among
+them. A group came slowly after these, shrouded and shuffling through
+the woods. In the midst of these she saw Goody Greene. This woman,
+alone of all the passers-by, turned and looked towards Doll. But her
+eyes were blind.
+
+Last of all came Ahab shaking his black head, a cowslip hanging from
+his blue lips. She would sleep and wake, but the procession would still
+be passing by, and every so often Ahab would pass by. The woods were
+humming-full with an infinity of unearthly things. There was continuous
+lovely singing—or rather a rhythmic humming that rose and fell and rose
+again.
+
+
+6
+
+_With daylight the tides of Hell recede. Doll wakes but to a more
+determined Evil._
+
+At last she awoke to see, not the procession of Hell, but bright day.
+The humming, however, still continued in her head, rising and falling,
+but not going away. She was frozen cold to her marrow. Now the loss of
+her foster father had become a tiny thing infinitely far away and long,
+long ago. All her previous existence seemed removed from her as if
+again a barrier had come down upon her, shutting one part of her life
+from the next. So, although she thought sadly of the kind man’s death,
+it already seemed one with the destruction of her parents—that is, a
+thing which has happened long back in childhood.
+
+She recalled to herself the story of a girl who had slept in a
+fairy-wood for a hundred years, and she looked fearfully at her hands,
+expecting them to be gnarled with a century. But they were as they
+always had been. Her hair about her shoulders was black. She thought
+that it was possible (and at that time it even seemed most probable)
+that, although her body might have retained its youthful form, a great
+flight of time had passed. She would go back to Cowan Corners to find
+the dark forest had swallowed it. There would be cellar holes lost in
+thickets, where Boston, Salem, Cowan Corners, Ipswich, etc., had stood.
+She felt herself alone upon a whole continent. Her body had grown
+so light and so unreal, she scarce could stand, nor was she wholly
+convinced of her own reality until she observed she still could cast a
+shadow.
+
+Doll Bilby had always longed for the comforts of religion, so it was
+natural that she, having as she believed just witnessed a manifestation
+of her ‘god,’ should now reverently stand and give thanks. She called
+upon her Father in Hell, thanking him that he had made manifest to her
+visible proof of his greatness. She called upon her father and mother,
+blessed them in the great name of Hell, and promised to serve them.
+She called upon all that vast host of evil things, blessed them, and
+promised to serve them.
+
+So she floated lightly forth, intent to see the place where Cowan
+Corners once had stood. Voices called her through the wood, and these
+she knew were true voices of men, not the eerie cries of ghosts or
+demons. She answered, ‘Here am I.’
+
+Four men came to her, nor was one of them a minute older than he had
+seemed last Sabbath at Meeting. Mr. Zelley cried out in pity, for her
+five days of despair, suffering, and even the astounding pleasures
+of the night before, had marked the face of Doll Bilby, altering its
+pretty childish shape.
+
+‘My child,’ he said, ‘you need not have run away. There is no reason to
+believe Mr. Bilby’s death due to anything but nature. Such a congestion
+of the lights is not uncommon and often results in death. Doll, as he
+lay dying, we questioned him if he was worked upon by any witchcraft,
+and he cried in a loud voice, “I die spirit free.”’
+
+Doll wept with her hands over her face. None saw that she shed no
+tears. But she knew that the springs of her tears had dried in the
+night. Mr. Zelley kissed her gently upon the forehead, and with that
+kiss he entered into pact with her, for after that he cherished her and
+became at last her confidant in all things, even in all evil things.
+And he had once been a minister of God.
+
+Mr. Zelley walked by her side. The three other men looked at her
+doubtfully, thinking each to himself, ‘This young woman is a murderess
+and a witch.’ They soon outdistanced the minister and the woman, so it
+was he alone who took her back to her own home.
+
+He told her that from now on, for a little space of time, life would be
+hard for her. She must live peaceably in the house with Hannah (there
+was no other place for her to go). She must, by a godly, upright, and
+virtuous life, and by the goodness of her conversation and dignity
+of her demeanour, give the lie (he said) to all those who would with
+tedious rustic simplicity believe her a witch. Both he and Mr. Kleaver
+knew Mr. Bilby died by nature and not by art. She was, moreover, in
+all things to trust him. He would clear her name (he said). He had
+power among these people (he hoped). She was to be of good heart, and
+the Lord God would be with her. Also he promised to come to her often,
+praying with her, and strengthening her.
+
+So he took her to her door. In the yard they saw the two indentured
+servants nailing together a wooden coffin. A group of serious men
+stood, watching them, and discussed the mutabilities of life, etc.
+Now and again one helped himself at the barrel of cider that had been
+rolled out to accommodate their thirst (for thirst is like to rise from
+serious discourse and ponderous thought).
+
+Mr. Zelley took her within the house. The ovens were fired and pots
+boiled on the hearth. There was the leg of a great ox on a spit
+over the coals. The little turnspit dog, which ordinarily served at
+the tavern, had been brought over to serve for the sad yet pleasing
+occasion. He turned the spit, as he had been trained to do. His eyes
+were red and rheumy. The hair was burned away from his hind quarters,
+and they were red and scorched. Doll remembered how often her foster
+father at the tavern had given scraps of food to this same miserable
+small dog, and how he called it ‘Old Father Time’ even when it was a
+pup, for it had always seemed bent, wizen, and full of many cares. She
+turned away her head.
+
+The house was full of neighbour women who had come to help prepare
+the funeral meats. Doll entered. All found reason they must go to the
+milk-house, the cellar, the barn, the pantry, or to the best room where
+the corpse lay and the widow sat in black. Doll and Mr. Zelley were
+left alone except for a squat and horrid form, who stood its own and
+feared no woman nor man nor witch. This was the form of Goochey, she
+who had the laying-out of the dead. She had a face and voice like a
+man’s. Indeed many believed that she was a man who, perhaps having
+committed offence in the Old World, had fled, thus disguised, to the
+New. She came from the Welsh borders, and would never touch a corpse
+unless she had first set upon her hands ten iron rings—one to each
+finger; for she feared that, without this protection, the spirit of the
+corpse might enter her veins and thus havoc her body.
+
+When Doll saw this dwarfish man-woman standing in the fire-room,
+fitting iron rings to her fingers, she shrank from her in horror.
+Goody Goochey muttered at her, and Mr. Zelley was distressed because
+he believed she was calling the distrait young woman a witch. However,
+such was the hoarseness of Goochey’s voice and such was the coarseness
+of her nature, he could not be sure. She might have been calling her
+another, no more flattering, but surely less dangerous, epithet.
+Mr. Zelley sincerely hoped so, for he was far more concerned with
+the reputation of Doll than he was with the good or bad language of
+Goochey.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+1
+
+ _Two Women sleep in the House of Hate. Doll Bilby, having ruined the
+ fortunes of a Student of Divinity, now turns her powers upon a_ DIVINE.
+
+As soon as the harvest was in and the grave of Jared Bilby was filled,
+winter came raging in with unwonted ferocity. It came in foot after
+foot of dazzling snow, at first snowing only in the night, the sun
+sparkling out brightly in the daytime. But by the New Year (the snow
+already standing up to the window-sills and over the fences) the winter
+grew black. There was no sun, and such storms blew from out the north
+and northeast as none had ever seen or heard of before. There was no
+ceasing of wind, snow, and black days. The sea roared continuously,
+like a thousand lions seeking food from a false god.
+
+The dead could not be buried. The cattle froze. The wolves went to the
+barnyards killing sheep, pigs, cattle, horses. A woman found a lynx
+among her ducks. The deer came out of the forest, joining the dairy
+herds, seeming to ask food of man and shelter in his barns. Such was
+the cruel winter that settled down on the dead man’s house, where lived
+his widow and adopted child.
+
+These two women lived alone, shut off together from the world in
+solitude. They lived almost without speaking and in hate. The two farm
+servants slept in the cow-sheds, and often afterwards said they dreaded
+even to enter that gloomy house, where the two women sat watching each
+other, hating and being hated.
+
+As was his duty, Mr. Zelley came often to see them. The snows were so
+deep he could not travel by horse, so he came on snowshoes with his
+Bible under his arm. Each woman he saw separately, praying with her
+and trying to comfort her. What he said to Mrs. Hannah all heard as
+soon as the roads were broken out and she was out among her gossips,
+but what he said to Doll no one knew, although in after years much
+that she said to him was known. Mrs. Bilby said that once he came out
+of Doll’s chamber like a soul spewed out of Hell. He looked roundabout
+him wildly as if he had seen a most frightful sight or heard most
+frightful things. Without as much as a word for the woman (who hoped he
+would pause and elucidate for her certain problems she had found in
+Leviticus), he seized upon a bottle of rumbullion, swallowed half of
+that, and made out of the house as though the devils were after him.
+The truth is on that day Doll had confessed to him that she was a witch.
+
+Up to this time he had always praised the Christian fortitude, the
+piety, the humbleness, and sobriety of Bilby’s Doll. But after that he
+came to be much agitated at the mere mention of her name, shaking his
+head, exclaiming, ‘Dear me,’ or mentioning the fact that we are all
+miserable sinners. He was about the Bilby house more than ever, seeing
+Doll always alone and in her own chamber.
+
+When it was said that Doll was a witch, he would reprove the speaker,
+sadly bidding him keep such light thoughts on serious matters to
+himself. Of course the Bible proves to us that there were witches in
+the days of Leviticus and Kings—but to-day ... now, he was not sure
+such things exist.
+
+‘Then you do not believe that Jonet Greene...?’
+
+‘There does not live a more excellent Christian. Fools call her a witch
+because she begins to lean upon her staff and she has a wandering eye.
+Many do so and have such.’
+
+‘Nor yet in the justice done upon the bodies of certain witches in
+Boston?’
+
+‘I will not judge of Boston. I speak only of Cowan Corners.’
+
+By these beliefs he gained some friends and lost others. If one does
+not believe in witches, how can one believe in devils, and if not in
+devils, how then in Hell?—and Hell is, as all know, the fundamental
+principle on which good conduct and Christian faith are built.
+
+The women in the Bilby house rarely spoke. Each knew her own duty and
+did it. The indentured servants kept to the barn, so there was no noise
+but the swish of the women’s skirts or brooms, the rattle of cooking
+ware, the slam of a door. Even the house dog, grown old and deaf, never
+barked. The cats, five in all, partook of the silence. They slipped
+from room to room, eyeing the women suspiciously, but without half the
+suspicion with which Hannah eyed them.
+
+On a cold night, Gideon, a big malty tom, being chill, sought animal
+warmth. He jumped upon Widow Bilby’s bed. She woke gagged with fear.
+She seized Gideon and, in spite of the clawing that shredded her arms,
+strangled him.
+
+The next day with an axe she killed every cat in the house. This brutal
+slaughter of innocent and pretty pets dismayed Doll almost beyond
+endurance. She had loved and fed every one, and they often slept
+upon her bed at night. Filled with abomination towards the woman,
+she thought at least to give her a headache, or in some way work her
+a small harm. She looked about for nail paring or wisp of hair with
+which she might fortify a poppet and work magic against the woman. She
+found to her astonishment that Hannah evidently suspected her, for any
+combing from her hair was instantly burned, and she never pared her
+nails except over a dark cloth which she shook out into the fire. While
+she did these things, she would look slyly at Doll, as if to say she
+understood her game, and would take every precaution against her. So
+she had done ever since her husband died, but Doll did not notice this
+precaution until February.
+
+Much of the time Doll lay in her own room upon her own narrow bed, and
+prayed to the Prince of Hell that he send some instructor or messenger
+to her ... but thus far only Mr. Zelley came to instruct her. She
+looked forward to the spring with longing, and because of a dream she
+had three times concerning a young man asleep in a bed of violets (yet
+the man she knew, even as she gazed at him, was infernal), she came to
+believe that in spring, when the violets blossom, a messenger would
+come.
+
+By February, the roads being broken, Widow Bilby was again about, but
+Doll in her discontent walked solitary. She saw no one except perhaps
+once in a long time Goody Greene, and once a week Mr. Zelley (whom
+she filled full of the phantasies of her childhood). She did not go
+to Church, and this shocked and angered the whole community, although
+Mr. Zelley himself insisted that she was too weak and sick to take the
+hard trip on horseback. Of her neighbours, the Thumbs, she saw nothing.
+Titus (because of the stories which Widow Bilby told his mother, and
+she, in turn, told him) went in daily terror of his life. He believed
+Doll had a poppet of him. If his head ached, it was because she pinched
+or pricked the head of the poppet. Were it his stomach, lights, bowels,
+that hurt him, he thought she was rubbing poison on the belly and
+body of this same poppet. When a black sow he had raised up by hand
+suddenly jumped into the air and fell dead, he thought she had in
+passing glanced at it.
+
+Of all things, however, Titus most feared Ahab, the black bull, who
+had, from the day Doll found him in the forest, changed his gentle
+nature to one most ferocious and perverse. He urged his father to
+butcher the animal before it took human life. The deacon said it would
+be gluttonous to put into the stomach such costly steaks, roasts, etc.,
+and any man who did so deserved to have his bowels rot.
+
+
+2
+
+_Showing that the Sun will always shine again, no matter how black the
+Winter._
+
+The winter had come early, but (contrary to country superstition) it
+remained late. For April was full of the racketing of wind, and May
+was drenched and all but drowned in rain. Not until the end of that
+month did the earth rally from adversity, and there come still and
+sunny days. The skies were of heavenly blueness, crossed only by herds
+of fleecy clouds, as sweet and innocent as wandering lambs. The grass
+grew green and was prettily pied with multitudes of little flowers.
+The fruit trees glanced but once at sun and sky, then burst into
+rapturous blooming. The beauty of these trees is not idle and barren.
+Their deeds (that is, their fructuation) is as good as their promise
+(or blossoming). Man may enjoy the loveliness of these flowers, knowing
+that their loveliness is one of accomplishment.
+
+Special lectures were held at the Meeting-House, giving thanks (where
+thanks were due) for the beneficent weather, the fertility of all
+things, the abundance of fish, game, wild foods, and good health of the
+community. In his praying Mr. Zelley (so it was observed) twice asked
+with particular passion that the old hatreds, the old jealousies, and
+the old cruel superstitions might be left behind, and that, in the new
+land, the spirit of man might break forth as a chick breaks the egg.
+
+The widow’s house had stood fast-shuttered for six months. Now it was
+open to sun and gentle breeze. Doll had been pale, sad, all winter; now
+she felt the gladness of the earth singing about her in the sweetest
+voice, calling her to set aside the dark mantle of the soul to take on
+joy, hope, and even pleasure. She felt frolicsome (as she had often
+felt with her foster father) and played with the calves and colts,
+secretly met the Thumb twins by the boundary brook, and filled them
+full of devilish lies.
+
+She went again to the Meeting-House, and even wantonly enjoyed herself
+during service, for she found that (such were her latent powers for
+harm), by merely twisting her fingers together and staring hard at
+Deacon Pentwhistle as he led the psalm singing, she could twist his
+throat so that he broke off into a coughing fit. Once, on seeing Titus
+enter the pasture where Ahab grazed, she slyly and only by thought
+ordered the creature to have at the young man. Behold! She had the
+inimitable pleasure of seeing Ahab make at him, and Titus barely
+reached a tree in time to save his limbs. If Ahab had gained too much
+on this swift and willing runner, she would have crossed her legs
+and this would have stopped the bull, for she wanted her old lover
+frightened, but neither maimed nor slain.
+
+Mr. Zelley continued to wrestle with her in prayer, begging her to
+believe that she could not be a witch because he (being little better
+than an atheist) thought such things could not exist. He always claimed
+that he strove to save her soul. She rewarded him by destroying his.
+She went often to his house and read in his library, especially of all
+such books as the ‘Malleus Maleficarum’ and ‘Sadducismus Triumphatus,’
+etc., which treat of witches and witchcraft, for she was unskilled and
+wished to learn proper charms and methods for working evil. She also
+questioned Goodwife Greene. Still she never could learn (except by
+accident) how to do any of the things she wished. She could not even
+summon the Devil, who, when he came, came as pleased him—not to her
+order.
+
+
+3
+
+ _An Intimation comes to Doll that some Infernal is about. She believes
+ that he whom she (in wicked abomination) worships will soon send sign
+ to her._
+
+On a morning she awoke, knowing she must go to Greene’s house. ‘I must
+see Goody Greene,’ she thought. ‘I must talk to Goody Greene.’ She left
+the pots unwashed, the room unswept. She put on neither coat nor hat,
+but went as she was, for the day was warm. Now the new year seemed to
+promise great things, and she felt confident these things she would
+find. There was every happiness close to her, hiding, waiting to be
+found. Through these pleasant and cheerful thoughts came racketing the
+clangour of a brass bell and the terrible blasting of a fish horn, and
+the voice of man (in this case the voice of the town crier) tolled out
+to her and to all the world those things that were lost.
+
+Mr. Minchon, the crier, put the fish horn under his arm and took the
+brass bell by the clapper.
+
+‘Gone away!’ he cried. ‘Gone away! Gone away! Four pirates from the
+Boston Jail, one day before their trial. Calico Jack and Black Pig
+Murch, Ben Bottle and the Bloody Shad. Likewise, from the pasture of
+Deacon Thumb, one priceless bull known to you all, the young bull
+Ahab.’ (Ding-dong! Ding-dong!)
+
+‘Lost or stole, lost or stole, a wallet and the money in it of Captain
+Tom Buzzey, for he put it on the tavern step, turned, and it was gone.
+Lost or stole, the wallet of Tom Buzzey—a wallet with the money in
+it.’ (Ding-dong!) Mr. Minchon, blowing again upon his fish horn, took
+himself and his sad news of things lost or things stolen to the next
+street corner; there, having gathered a crowd about him, he proclaimed
+again. He moved again and yet again. Knowing the matter of which he
+spoke, Doll could even at a long way recognize the names of the four
+pirates, for he always began with full lungs, so she heard four times
+the crying out of these names, Calico Jack and Black Pig Murch, Ben
+Bottle and the Bloody Shad, but of Captain Buzzey’s loss she heard but
+once, for Mr. Minchon arrived at it with spent ardour and small voice.
+Doll continued on her way to Greene’s hut.
+
+Between the house of Mr. Zelley and the House of God, she met seven
+Indians who walked the one after the other, with feet silent as panther
+paws. They were dressed in the paint and regalia affected by their
+chief men, in the hope of giving to their persons, by external and
+childish methods, that true dignity which never can come from without
+but arises only from the soul. The Indians passed (as they always do)
+without so much as glancing at the white woman, but she gazed hard upon
+them, thinking that perhaps they really were devils—as many ignorant
+people then believed—and that the sign or messenger which she had come
+to look for constantly would be from them. As she watched, a feather
+floated or rather seemed to be lifted from the headgear of one of
+these, and, after wavering a second, it came to rest at her feet. This
+was a scarlet feather with a yellow tip to it. She stooped to it, and
+hid it in her bosom, looking longingly after the seven chief men,
+thinking that having vouchsafed her this favour they might sign her to
+follow them. They did not.
+
+She went her way, but she went exulting, with red cheeks and smiling
+mouth. The young men she passed at the tavern drew back that she might
+not cast a roving eye upon them and desire them, for they all knew of
+the bewitchment by which she had afflicted Thumb. They guessed, by the
+unaccustomed red of her cheek and the sparkle of her eye, that (spring
+having come again) she was wandering about looking for a new young man
+to devour. The young men stood back; Doll went her way.
+
+She came to the waste marshes by the sea on which sat the tinker’s hut.
+She rapped on the door and cried out her own name. The woman did not
+call ‘Come in,’ as was usual, and Doll heard rustlings, whisperings,
+tramplings, within. She thought how this woman, like herself, was a
+witch. Her heart beat quicker with the (to her) delightful thought that
+perhaps at that very moment she had discovered Greene in confab with
+some fiend spirit or familiar, and that was why the door was not opened
+to her, that was why there were rustlings from within. Then Goody
+Greene opened the door and with her usual affection drew the girl into
+her miserable house, kissed her, and put out the stool, a jointstool,
+for her to sit on. Greene went on with her own business which was
+concerned with sorting out into heaps dried toadstools and mushrooms.
+
+Doll stared at her and saw how hard the pulse throbbed in the old
+woman’s neck, how her hands shook at her work, how again and again she
+swallowed as if choked by an oppressive secret. But the girl could not
+tell the woman she thought her a witch and say, ‘I would like to see
+the familiar I know must be close by,’ for the moment she stopped upon
+the threshold she was aware that she and the goodwife were not alone.
+She could feel the air tremble about her; she could almost hear it,
+all but see it. It was there, close in the one room of the hut, with
+them. It had not flown at her coming; it had hid itself. She saw that
+the hangings upon the bed were drawn. ‘It is yonder,’ she thought;
+‘the fiend hides in the bed behind drawn curtains.’ She was sick with
+fear, but her hopes rode high. She took from her bosom the feather the
+Indian had dropped. What did Goody Greene think of the feather? Greene
+said it was a bright and pretty feather, and proved the Indians to be
+more skillful than we in dyeing. But did it mean nothing more to her
+than that? No, nothing more. She put it back into her bosom. What would
+Goody do with so many fungi? She would mix them with snake fat and cure
+rheumatics. She said she did not know snakes had any fat. Greene said
+that any distillation from flesh was called ‘fat.’ Then they sat for a
+long time without speaking.
+
+Doll helped with the sorting.
+
+Doll thought to herself, ‘Be my friend, Goody Greene; confess you are
+a witch, show me your familiar, and we will work magic together, for I
+cannot bear to be so lonely.’ The woman set a pot on the fire to make
+a gruel for dinner. She put three handfuls of maize into the pot. Doll
+asked her, ‘Does the goodman come back for dinner?’ ‘No,’ said Greene,
+‘I put in the extra handful by mistake.’ This was very strange, thought
+Doll, but in her mind made note of the fact that a familiar will
+condescend to eat maize gruel like a poor man. It distressed Doll that
+the woman would not trust her and produce her familiar.
+
+The woman squatted before the pot, Doll knelt beside her, and, because
+she was sick with bitter loneliness, she pressed her face against the
+woman’s sleeve and said, ‘You are the only mother I have ever had since
+I was a tiny child, and I, Goody Greene, I am the only child you ever
+had.’ The woman let the wooden spoon slip from her fingers so that it
+was lost in the gruel, and Doll, who jumped up to fetch her another
+one, saw from the corner of her eye that she glanced at the bed. ‘Ah,’
+thought Doll, ‘perhaps she has made herself a popinjay from broom or
+rags or scarecrow, and calls this thing “son.” Perhaps that is what she
+has about her in this room—and in the bed most likely.’
+
+As they ate their dinner (of which there was far too much for the
+two women), Doll asked Greene to tell her again some of those old
+stories by which she had enchanted her as a child. Greene told her of
+the unfortunate earl’s daughter, who consented to a boat ride with
+a handsome stranger-man. (The masts were of gold, but did not bend
+before the wind. The sails were of taffety, and did not fill with the
+breeze.) They sailed three leagues and then she spied his cloven hoof
+and wept most bitterly, knowing it was no man but a devil with whom she
+must cope.
+
+Greene told her other ungodly stories from an ungodly antiquity. Doll
+questioned her at every turn. She must know how each magic trick was
+worked; she must hear how it was Fair Jennifer of Bageley Wood called
+her demon to her. Greene told her the true story of how a lycanthropic
+man, believing himself to be a wolf, killed fifteen in the Midlands
+before the soldiers got him. She told her of Queen Mab and her tiny
+tinsel court. At last Doll got to her feet to go. She heard the bed
+creak, and saw a moving lump bulge out the drawn curtains. But the
+familiar did not make itself manifest. As Greene stared at the hearth,
+Doll slyly drew the red and yellow feather from her bosom and, brushing
+by the bed, she slipped the feather within. Calling a hasty good-bye,
+she left abruptly, and began to run, for she (in spite of hopes) half
+feared a great, scaly, black fiend would leap from the bed and on the
+instant shoulder her, and march off down to Hell.
+
+
+4
+
+_Doll finds an Imp in a cellar. It proves unfriendly to her._
+
+On the next day Doll returned to the marsh hut. Again she found Goody
+Greene seemingly alone, yet the one room was mysteriously filled with a
+Presence. That day Greene was making teas, infusions, etc. She had four
+pots on the coals, and was much confined, in her thoughts and in her
+words, by watching them.
+
+Beside the hut was a cold-cellar dug into the ground, and in this
+Greene stored her herbs, her drugs, fats, oils, bottles, pans—all the
+matter for her trade. She wanted organy, dittany, and galingale root.
+Doll ran quickly to the cellar. She knew where these things were laid.
+
+She opened the door, which was in the shape of a bulkhead, and ran down
+the short flight of stairs. Here she had played in childhood, and the
+strong odours of herbs, roots, and meat oils were fragrant to her. So
+she paused a moment, sniffing about. There was a rattle on a dark shelf
+behind a clay crock, and a snake skin shook. She thought she had left
+the familiar behind her in the good woman’s bed, yet she cried out in
+her horror, calling by mistake to the _true_ God—not to the Satan she
+had sworn to serve; for there, peeking about the clay crock, was a
+ball of tawny fur and from out the fur glared a little man’s face. His
+features were like an Ethiop’s, and his head no bigger than an orange.
+She noticed, even in the brief moment she paused to look at him, that
+hands and even nails were perfect. Behind dangled a long ringed tail—a
+pretty tail of black and dun.
+
+This imp was much offended by her, for it scolded her in strange
+languages, and its eyes were red with hate. So in terror she, who
+thought herself brave enough to stand up before Lucifer, fled from the
+littlest of his servants. This servant she saw again, and the next time
+without fear.
+
+She ran to Goody Greene, crying she had seen a terrible thing.
+
+‘Hush,’ said Greene; ‘you saw a skull or two, or a snake skin....’
+
+‘No, no, no, it was alive. It was a little imp.’
+
+‘You dreamed it—or it may have been a cat. Cats get into my cellar for
+the sake of the fats.’
+
+‘It was not a cat.’
+
+But Greene knew it was not an imp.
+
+At the end Doll was cast down because Greene trusted her so little she
+would not confess the truth, even when she had seen the actual fact of
+the imp’s body, had heard it chatter. She was distressed, picked up her
+bonnet and put it on her head. There was much work to do, she said.
+Mrs. Hannah was plucking geese, and she must be back in time to rub
+ointment on them where they bled.
+
+‘Doll,’ said Greene, ‘I heard you cry out to God for help when you saw
+the cat in the cellar.’
+
+‘I forgot myself,’ murmured Doll, and was ashamed that in her extremity
+she had called upon God and not upon the Foul Fiend she had sworn to
+worship. She guessed this was the reason both for the imp’s rage and
+Greene’s mistrust. ‘I will not forget again,’ she said.
+
+Goody Greene assumed an attitude which seemed indeed to the girl one
+of mock piety. She rolled her eyes and said, ‘Always give thanks where
+thanks are due.’
+
+Doll thought she was reproving her. ‘I will next time,’ she promised.
+
+Then she went away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+1
+
+_The night crackles with Fire. Hell laughs and a Witch meets that which
+she long has sought._
+
+Still in the month of May, catastrophe came to Cowan Corners. On
+three nights, consecutively, great fires broke out. The first took
+the noon-house of the Church. The second the ropewalk of Deacon
+Pentwhistle. The third took the barns, sheds, outhouses of Deacon
+Ephraim Thumb. This last fire was upon the thirty-first day of May and
+the morrow would be June.
+
+The farm servants of Widow Bilby came up from the cow-sheds. They
+called to the window in the attic where Hannah slept (for since the
+nights were warm she preferred the desolation of an attic to the
+proximity of her detested companion), ‘Widow Bilby, Widow Bilby,
+there’s a great fire at our neighbour’s. Shall we not go to help?’
+The widow told them to go and do their best, and God go with them.
+She, too, would follow soon. She got into her clothes, and Doll heard
+her stamping down the stairs and out of the house. Doll looked from
+her window and the sky was orange. She clutched her throat, for fire
+terrified her (because of her parents’ death), yet it fascinated her
+(because of her unnatural yearning for Hell).
+
+[Illustration: Building on fire]
+
+Will she, nill she, the young woman dressed and, much perturbed, she
+reached the outskirts of the onlookers. With them she could not mingle,
+for they feared her, and she dreaded this same fear. She withdrew to a
+big straw stack, and beneath its overhanging top (for the cattle had
+rubbed against it) she found herself a hiding-place.
+
+Every able man in the village was there, and half of the women. She saw
+Titus passing buckets and getting out gear, nor could she have looked
+at him without some slight regret, for he was a goodly, comely man and
+a young witch has an amorous eye. She heard the shouting, the running
+about, the snap and rustle of the flames. Sometimes other idle watchers
+came close to where she hid, and from their talk she learned that these
+three fires had all been started by a cat breathing fire. Widow Bilby
+had said that this same cat could be no other than her old tom, Gideon,
+now dead a three-month, thus maliciously returned from Hell. Doll heard
+her own name spoken and saw heads shaken. She also heard that Ahab
+was still within the vehemently burning barn. Because of his ferocity
+as well as because of his wanderings, he had lately been closely
+penned. So far no one had been able to loose him, although several
+had essayed to do so. The horses, savage with fear, had been moved
+far from the fire lest they, with the fondness of their kind, return
+to their accustomed stalls and perish. The cattle were running about
+the barnyard, where they interfered with the work, upsetting buckets,
+etc. Such swine as the Thumbs possessed burned to their deaths, their
+stench polluting the air. Doll sickened at the smell, for she never
+could forget the holocaust of Mont Hoël. Until the fire burst the
+ridgepole, the doves flew constantly from their cotes under the eaves.
+Some were so singed they fell to the muck of the yard and, trampled
+under foot, perished.
+
+Just before the fall of the barn floor, Ahab was loosed. With sparks
+upon his coat, his eyes rolling most horribly, he came out of danger
+at a gallop. Seeing the crowd, he charged furiously, passing over the
+bodies of three, yet not staying to gore them, so intent was he on
+the men who ran. Wherever he went, the crowd melted and the shouting
+rose. Many believed it was this wicked bull, and not the Hell cat,
+that had set these fires, for now he seemed intent on guarding the
+fire and would let no one near it. Doll thought the creature was her
+friend—perhaps sometime he would become her familiar; but when she saw
+him coming for her on a brisk and determined trot she ran up the short
+ladder leaning against the straw stack, not relying unduly on either
+charms or friendship.
+
+The same moment the roof fell and sparks flew up, rising into the
+night air an hundred feet and more, until the sky seemed filled with
+departing souls flying up and up to the Throne of God.
+
+Doll, panting from her vexatious exercise upon the ladder and sweating
+from her recent fear, found herself upon the top of the straw stack.
+She was sprawled upon hands and knees. In the fury of the orange light
+(which with the fall of the roof suddenly was most horrible) she
+gazed about her. Then she saw she was not alone, for with her was a
+luggard fiend who stretched his length upon the straw. His eyes were
+red as though filled with blood. He wore (she said) a costume like
+a seaman’s, except that, where a seaman’s clothes are coarse, his
+were fine and dainty. For instance, the hoops in his ears were not of
+brass but jewels. She said he had a silk kerchief tied about his head.
+Upon his breast he bare—as if in mockery of that virgin whose worship
+the Catholics prefer to the worship of God—the very imp, the little
+servant, whom she had seen in Greene’s cold-cellar. She guessed he was
+her god, or a messenger from her god, so, crying out, ‘Master, master,
+you have come for me,’ she further prostrated herself before him. Now
+she was no more alone, for this fiend had come for her.
+
+At first the demon made no response; then, after a little and with a
+few high but kindly words, he permitted her to approach. She said she
+could scarce believe that, after such long waiting and such unanswered
+prayers, he had at last come. ‘Oh, I have been lonely, lonely; I have
+had no one,’ and she sobbed (no tears came).
+
+‘Why do you sob, Bilby’s Doll?’
+
+‘Because I am happy at last.’
+
+He reproved her gently because she had ever doubted his advent, which
+he said he had announced to her by the lighting of these three great
+fires. It was his will that turned her steps to the ladder and, as she
+became too intent upon the fire to notice the summons of his will, he
+loosed a fierce black bull who urged her up the humble ladder and into
+his presence.
+
+‘And you really are from....’
+
+‘From Hell,’ he said, and showed her his teeth that were white and
+strong as an animal’s. She shrank a little from him. He told her not
+to fear to approach and touch him, for he was in human guise. There
+was no sulphur on his person, no blasting fire in his hands. To prove
+his wholesome humanity he touched her wrist, and she experienced a
+shock of joy such as she had formerly experienced when her mother had
+led her to Satan in the heart of the oak wood. This joy she accounted
+a religious joy—such (so she explained to Mr. Zelley) as a Christian
+would experience at receiving the visitations of an angel.
+
+Now was she no longer alone in this sad world, for her god (that is,
+Satan) had come to succour her, or had at least sent her a messenger.
+She asked him which he was, Satan or lesser demon. At the mention of
+Satan’s name, he bowed his head reverently. He admitted that he was but
+one of many fallen angels who had left Paradise with the Awful Prince.
+At first she was cast down, for she had hoped to hear that it was the
+Prince himself. But she looked again, and marked how handsome a man he
+was and of what a fine ruddy complexion. She saw how strong were his
+shoulders, and how arched and strong his chest. She was thankful then
+that Satan had not seen fit to send her merely some ancient hag or
+talking cat, ram, or little green bird, but this stalwart demon. She
+thought, ‘He can protect me even from the hate of Mrs. Hannah.’ She
+thought, in her utter and damnable folly, ‘He can protect me from the
+Wrath of God.’
+
+The whole barn fell into the cellar hole. As she looked towards this
+glowing pit, she thought of that vaster and crueller bonfire in which
+her soul would burn forever. She thought well to ask him a little
+concerning those pains which she later must suffer. He laughed at her.
+There would be, he said, no pain. Those who served Satan faithfully in
+this world were never burned in Hell. Was not Satan King of Hell? Why
+should he burn those who loved and obeyed him? She was stuffed full of
+lunatic theology. The only souls that suffered in Hell were such of
+God’s subjects as had angered Him and yet had made no pact of service
+with Satan. These the devils burned—even as God ordered. It gave them a
+thing to do. He pointed out there were no angels in Hell watching out
+that God’s orders be fulfilled, so naturally the devils did not carry
+out the cruel sentences God meted out to true subjects of Satan. Again
+he said, ‘Why should they?’
+
+She asked him of news concerning her father and mother—good witches
+whom the French had burned in Brittany. These he assured her roamed
+happily and at free will, finding cooling breezes even in Hell. When
+it pleased them, they sat and conversed with antiquity or with the
+greatest kings, princes, etc., who had ever lived in this world. But
+her mother was a kindly woman and got more pleasure out of good deeds
+than from idle conversation. Therefore Satan permitted her to go about
+among those who burn and give them water or fan away the smoke. Doll
+was convinced that the messenger had indeed seen her mother, whom she
+always remembered as a gentle and loving woman.
+
+Was this kind mother aware of her daughter’s sufferings? Was it she
+who had thought to send him to comfort her? No, no. A mortal who is
+dead cannot see back into life. It was Satan himself who had pitied her
+and ordered him to her side. Him he bade her worship, ‘Truth in and
+humbly.’ At first she could not understand this reversal of many sacred
+phrases. Later she came to know this blasphemous jargon well. For every
+night she said Our Lord’s most holy prayer backwards—thereby addressing
+herself to Satan; but what came to her as punishment for this wicked
+practice we shall see.
+
+He had about him a bottle of grog, and from this he baptized her,
+‘Ghost holy and son, Father of name the in.’ Now he said she was no
+longer Bilby’s Doll. Now she was the Devil’s Doll. And he kissed her
+reverently upon the forehead. His pretty imp peeked out from within
+his blue blouse where he kept it. He bade her stroke it. This she did.
+She said it was a warm and gentle imp, with tired and thoughtful (but
+not malicious, as she had at first thought) eyes. It was well furred
+and, if it were not for its wise, sad face and minute black hands, she
+might have thought it indeed but an animal. She came to love this imp,
+playing with it and petting it. Its name, he said, was Bloody Shad.
+‘Why,’ she said, ‘that is the name of one of the pirates that escaped.’
+The fiend said he knew that fine fellow well. He had taken his nickname
+from the imp the young woman now held in her pretty little hands.
+
+The fire was laid and the dawn gave more light than the embers. Birds
+shook the thin, watery air with their calling. A few men still stood
+about the fire. The one called to the other that Ahab was in a village
+garden devouring new-set cabbage plants and terrifying women. Doll
+leaned towards these men, listening to their news. As she turned back
+to inquire of her instructor the true status of Ahab in the community
+and in the Hierarchy of Hell, she found to her great sorrow that he was
+gone.
+
+At the same time one of the barnyard fowls who the night before had
+suffered bitterly, being as he was a cock, struck a gallant attitude
+upon a heap of dung, and, lifting his head, greeted the coming day with
+a triumphant cock-a-doodle-doo. She heard the cocks on her own farm
+answer this challenge with distant fairy cries.
+
+This was a new day, and with it came great hopes.
+
+Later she was asked if she did not know that cocks crow at an earlier
+hour—for they generally begin before the light. Yes, this she knew. But
+her demon must have had the power to stay the crowing of the cocks, for
+he never remained later than the first cry from such a bird, yet often
+he stayed until the day was almost light—for instance, on that first
+meeting. It was light when he left, and yet no cock cried until he was
+gone.
+
+Where did he go to?
+
+He went back to Hell.
+
+
+2
+
+_How Doll became a Servant to the Servant of Hell._
+
+This fiend—this caco-demon—came to her again and yet again. But after
+his first visit there was a pause and it seemed likely that he might
+not come again. She thought daily to get his summons, either to Black
+Sabbath or to class of more instruction. Would he bid her mount a broom
+and fly to him? Against this emergency she went to Dame Cosset’s, a
+broom-maker, and paid sixpence ha’penny for a new red broom that she
+might appear handsomely mounted before her lord. This broom she hid
+in her chamber. Likewise she hid rushes and clay for the devising of
+poppets, and glass, knives, pins, and needles, for the working of her
+master’s will.
+
+On the eighth night from the time of the Thumb fire, she heard close by
+the house the hooting of an owl—which she knew was no owl. And Hannah,
+too, recognized the falsity of that cry, for she started up, saying
+that Indians were about. That was at eight o’clock. At nine they heard
+again the crying of an owl, and the dog at the barn began to howl
+dismally. Hannah swore that it was the bonded boys playing tricks. By
+ten again the hooting of the owl, but Hannah slept. Doll Bilby got to
+her room, and, taking clothes and a pillow, made a dummy of herself
+which she thrust into the bed, thus to deceive Hannah if the woman
+should look about for her. Grasping her red broom, but not essaying to
+mount it, she ran joyously from the house, anxious to meet her god or
+the accredited messenger of that god.
+
+She came out of the house and found the moon to be rising and the night
+to be of a dainty, delicate, springtime beauty. Birches twinkled in
+the moonlight; their slender trunks seemed to be the white limbs of
+nymphs. The grasses that her broom brushed were sweet with flowers. She
+ran up and down the pastures, along the fences, over the fields. She
+ran until she was like to drop, and then found him where hereafter she
+always was to find him—in an opening in birch woods, enthroned upon a
+tussock. In the flowery pasture land this spot which he had selected
+for himself was a darling fairy bower. The exact spot is known to this
+day, for Doll, on seeing the fiend, threw her red broom into the birch
+trees, thus marking the spot, for she never took it back with her. Five
+years later boys found it and, on being taken to Dame Cosset, the woman
+said yes, it was one of her own brooms, and indeed the very one she
+had once sold to wicked Bilby for sixpence ha’penny. It is noticeable
+to this day that cattle will not graze there, and that dogs coursing
+for rabbits will stop frozen at this place and howl; yet so inferior
+is the good sense and righteousness of man to that of beasts, it has
+become a common tryst for lovers, who, in each other’s arms, repeat
+with foolish laughter (and yet, it may be hoped, with some sensible
+fear) the story of how Bilby’s wicked Doll there met and loved a demon.
+Then they will go by moonlight to the cellar hole of the Bilby house,
+and pick a little of the yellow broom which country people call witch’s
+blood.
+
+The demon Prince permitted the witch to kneel to him and let her kiss
+his feet (which were not cloven). She noticed how cold to touch he
+was—like the fiends and devils in old tales. But the big hands he put
+upon her head (she reverently kneeling) were warm as any man’s, and
+this heartened her. So he welcomed her ‘Fellowship Christian in.’ Then
+he seated himself and permitted her to sit. At first the talk was of
+great dignity, but soon it was much like that of one gossip to another.
+He told her how his work had prospered him in Salem, in Boston, and now
+in Hartford. And how another fiend (but this one in shape of woman)
+worked in New York among the silly Dutch, as far north as Albany, and
+yet another (this fiend in the shape of a great tawny dog) in Virginia
+and the Carolinas. ‘Ah,’ cried Doll, ‘how thankful I, or rather all of
+us witches roundabout the Bay Colony should be that you have deigned
+to appear to us in the shape of a true proper man.’ The fiend laughed
+horribly, saying there had been much complaining among the wizards and
+the warlocks because he was but a man—not a wild free wanton wench like
+she of the Dutch country.
+
+Then he asked her if she could come with ease to him on such nights
+as he should call her, and she answered yes, she could come to him,
+but she must always wait her foster mother’s sleeping and then leave
+secretly by her own window. She begged him to cry no more as hooting
+owl, for this aroused suspicion—the woman guessing it to be a man’s
+voice. At this he seemed angry, and said the cries she had heard were
+in truth no man’s cries, for he had bade an owl to go about the house
+and hoot. He explained to her that, as man may not laugh convincingly
+upon command, neither may owl hoot. Still, for such clumsiness the
+owl must die. So they argued for a while, Doll pleading with him to
+spare the unfortunate owl, and in the end, going back on her early
+statements, she said the cry had not sounded like a man, but exactly
+like an owl, and that the creature had hooted amazing well. He agreed,
+therefore, to spare the owl and to send him often to call her out.
+
+She was rejoiced and humbled to think that he, so great and busy
+a fiend, would find time to send for her again and again, and she
+confessed to him the unendurable loneliness, desolation, and despair of
+her life—especially since her foster father had died; how even Titus,
+who had once professed to love her, now fled in terror from her glance,
+fearing her witchcraft; how Mrs. Hannah dreaded her so she would not
+leave a combing of hair nor a paring of nail about the house, and also
+how this woman had butchered Gideon and her other creatures.
+
+As she talked the fiend came close to her, soothing her with his hands
+upon her body. Then she suddenly stopped her rehearsal of sorrow, and
+for a moment she went in deathly fear, for she guessed what the fiend
+intended. Still, such was her wickedness, she also felt uplifted and
+glorified, and in the end, it were these feelings that conquered in
+her, for she entirely forgot or set aside Christian fears and Christian
+modesty. The fiend kissed her and told her to be of good heart, for
+of all the many witches he had met in his recent travels through New
+England, it was she he most fancied and she should be his paramour. So
+she consented, and thus came to be the servant of the servant of Hell.
+
+
+3
+
+ _A thought for a Wise Man. Is Beauty of Flesh a good or evil thing?
+ And the opinions of pagan Antiquity as contrasted to our own_ THEOLOGY.
+
+There is one quality in this world which men call goodness. This is
+the beauty of the spirit, and is from God and of God. There is another
+quality, which is beauty of the body, and from whence comes it?
+
+The heathen Greeks, whom the Reverend Pyam Plover has suggested were
+but devil worshippers, believed these two things to be identical; that
+is, what is good is beautiful, what is ugly is evil. Yet need the
+thoughtful Christian but read history, or look about him to-day, to
+see that rather than identical these two beauties should be considered
+non-congruent or mutually antagonistic. All must have observed how
+often the most virtuous women have been of no great bodily beauty,
+and yet certain famous wantons have been blessed (or cursed) with
+bounteous fleshly charms. One should but consider the lives of
+Cleopatra, that Helen known as Helen of Troy, Dido, etc.
+
+Beauty of the body, in that it excites to lust and evil thoughts, is
+wicked, but the sick, ugly, maimed body, in that it excites the sweet
+and gentle passion of pity, is from God. For this reason modesty in the
+young, blooming, comely female is of greater necessity than in the sick
+and ancient.
+
+But it is not alone in a consideration of the needful and (in its
+proper place) decent female body that one may observe how often Evil
+has wormed its way into the hearts of humanity under specious guise of
+Beauty. For when the Devil would steal the soul of Bilby’s Doll, he
+showed her lavishly and in wanton profusion such sights of pagan beauty
+no Christian, godly woman may ever expect to see.
+
+For her this seemly ordered earth, on which we set our houses, in
+which we humbly plough and delve—this quiet earth for her brake open
+into a rare flowering. She saw the satyrs (close by the salt marshes)
+gambolling upon mud flats. In the morning she saw the goatprints of
+their hooves. She heard nymphs sing all night in trees. She saw birch
+trees in the moonlight spun out of solid silver, and those common
+flowers, which by day (and in the sight of God) are but buttercups,
+turned into glittering jewels which by their very brilliance frightened
+her. Even that fiend the Devil sent to her was handsomer far than any
+mortal man might be. He was lovely to the eye, and his touch was as the
+touch of fire. The strength of his arms was beyond that of mortal men
+(who are born but to praise God and die). So was every moment that she
+spent with him a moment of ecstasy. How can mortal man contend with
+fiends in the love of woman? Have they such unholy power to arouse
+passion?
+
+It is well known that no woman who has ever accepted an infernal lover
+may content herself with the ruck of men—such seeming, after the love
+of Hell, but pale, unsubstantial shadows. And the same may be said the
+other way over, for men, it is said, who have known nymphs, elves,
+or succubi, will long for them all their lives, eschewing the feeble
+impuissant arms of women.
+
+So it is an established fact that Beauty that delights the eye is
+more often a curse from Lucifer than a blessing from God. Let the
+reasonable and righteous man content himself with that which is plain
+and seemly—whether it is a church or wife or horse or land that he
+considers. Let him not yield to the delights of the eye, but rather to
+the beauty of goodness, piety, etc., which burns from within.
+
+
+4
+
+_Some remarkable Wonders of an Invisible Kingdom._
+
+For fairy women came to her by night, whispering.... ‘Get up ... get up
+... get up....’
+
+Strange hands plucked at her bedclothes, pinched or patted her.
+
+Although her window was fast shut, once a great scaled and hairy arm
+came in by that same window, and she trembled. Now the arm grew to
+three times, four times, the length of human arm. She saw it sweep the
+room with a blind and scythe-like motion. It searched for her. She
+remained still. Then it was gone as miraculously as it had come.
+
+There was a vast animal that rubbed nightly against the house, sniffing
+and blowing.
+
+A monster (she thought it a demon) treaded the roof-tree by night.
+
+Such was her appreciation of these awful and yet to her (coming from
+him she chose to accept as God) pleasing sights, she scarcely slept,
+being more awake by night than day, for at night she could hardly lie
+upon her bed nor close her eyes. She was forever staring and listening,
+listening and staring. With the crowing of the cock these disturbing
+visions retreated to that same Hell in which they had their geneses.
+
+Sometimes she floated forth without volition, as on a certain night
+when she cried out, ‘Master, command me and I will come.’ Then far away
+and from the midst of the moonlight, she heard fairy women cry, ‘Get up
+... get up ... get up....’
+
+‘Then I will,’ she said. Of a sudden her body was filled with lightness
+and (at first maintaining her horizontal position) she was elevated
+from off her bed. Thrice around the room she floated and, looking down,
+she saw her own vacant body as it lay still and flat as any corpse.
+‘If I am going out to walk wet fields,’ she thought, ‘I should put
+on slippers.’ Then the red slippers Mr. Bilby once had bought her in
+Boston appeared upon her feet. She floated through the window, but once
+this was cleared she was set in vertical position. However, she felt
+no contact with the grass, and she took no steps. She floated on.
+
+The moon was big upon the hills. The night air shook ravishing perfumes
+from the flowers and new leaves. The air was full of birds’ songs
+(although it was dead of night), of voices, strange music, laughter.
+She floated on. The silver birches twinkled and bowed to her. Her name
+was called by a thousand little voices. A million gleaming eyes watched
+her. At last she was thus conveyed to the fiend, who was seated upon
+a hillock, as on a throne. He raised her up when she would prostrate
+herself to him. He bade her have no fear, for, although in Hell he was
+indeed a great prince, upon earth he was as mortal man and her true
+love.
+
+In the morning, when she awoke in her own bed, she believed that the
+adventure of the night had been but another dream. She drew her body
+from between the sheets, and set her feet upon the floor. Upon her feet
+were the red slippers, and they were wet. Upon the sheets were green
+stains from the grass crushed beneath her feet.
+
+Now could she know truth from dreams and dreams from truth.
+
+
+5
+
+_We are informed that there is no marriage nor giving in marriage in
+Heaven, but in Hell it well may be otherwise._
+
+She never saw her fiend by day. He came at dead of night. He went by
+cock crow (yet, as already pointed out, sometimes delaying this same
+crowing). He ruled by love and not by terror. She gave him soul and
+body, both as act of impious homage, and of true love. So a month wore
+away—the month of June.
+
+At every turn and in every way he comforted and charmed her. She
+confessed to him how greatly she dreaded that day, which he said must
+now soon come, when he would be summoned back to Hell. She begged him
+to take her with him—for without him she had no use for this dull
+earth. She begged him to slay her now, and thus, her spirit released,
+she would take her way with him to Hell, and there live with him, once
+more with her parents—whom the French burned in Brittany. So she fitted
+his hands to her throat. He would not. He only promised her again and
+again that when she lay dying he himself would come to her once more,
+and stand at her bed’s head. He promised her a short life, and life
+everlasting.
+
+So this young woman, who had often shown a need for true religion,
+found great comfort in a false one. It was a fiend that fed, it
+would seem, her soul’s hunger. By him and by the hopes of Hell she
+was comforted, as the true Christian is by his Lord and the hopes
+of Paradise. She became reconciled to life, to death, to adversity,
+loneliness, and despair.
+
+There was no problem that he could not answer for her, no doubt he
+did not lay. For instance, she was distressed to think that when her
+true life should begin (that is, when she died and entered Hell) she
+would not see the kind foster father, but would undoubtedly encounter
+his disagreeable wife. No, explained the demon, she was wrong, for he
+knew that Jared Bilby was already there, well and at peace. He had
+committed mortal sin by saving her when a child, for she was already a
+witch, and it is mortal sin to save a witch. ‘But at the time he did
+not know I was a witch. I do not think he ever believed it.’ The demon
+said that made no difference. Mortal sin was mortal sin, but Satan,
+grateful to him for saving the life of Doll, had never carried out the
+cruel sentence which had been meted out to him at the Awful Judgement
+Seat. Doll wanted to know what this sentence was. He said it was of
+so revolting a nature he could not tell her. His words made her hate
+Jehovah, and she felt Satan was a kinder ‘god.’
+
+The demon went on to assure her that Mrs. Hannah would undoubtedly
+be given place in Heaven. She was a pious woman, always at meeting,
+lecture, and prayer. There were already millions of just such vixens
+singing miserable psalms, badly out of tune, about the golden streets.
+If she did in some way get sent down to Hell, he promised they would
+all get together and make it hot for her. They couldn’t endure such
+ugly scolds in Hell. Doll was surprised. ‘She is not ugly. She is
+remarkably handsome.’ The devil was surprised. He said he had supposed
+from what he heard that she must be very ugly.
+
+There was now only one thing with which she could vex herself, for her
+demon comforted her at every turn. Sometimes as he held her in his arms
+she moaned a little and pulled away. He begged her to tell him. He
+was her true love. Let her tell him and he would help. Then she told
+him that she knew that upon occasions fiends do actually marry mortal
+women. He laughed at her, and tried to turn her fancy from such homely
+thoughts. She would not be turned. He said witches and women talked
+alike, and yet he did not refuse to marry her.
+
+With the commendable and proper thought of marriage in her head, she
+sought out Goody Greene (whom she had seen but little of late). She
+walked with her through the woods, helping her gather that bitter
+flower which the Indians call the jug-woman’s-baby. The old woman was
+tired and the two sat upon a stone. From where they sat Doll could see
+the birch woods, the rough pastures, where by night she met her devil.
+
+‘Dear Goody, tell me as you used to tell the story of the goblin or
+infernal who came to a maid’s window on a May eve and wed her in a
+respectful and seemly manner. Why cannot devils always do so? It is sad
+to think that a loving wench—betrayed by love—may become but the doxy
+of the devil.’ She was near tears—although now she never had tears to
+shed.
+
+The old woman told the story of Fair Jennifer of Bageley Wood. She had
+a demon lover—a black and scaly fellow, cold to touch as serpent or
+any ice or iron. He came to her window three times, calling her to
+get up and come to him. She lay disobedient upon her bed. Then on the
+third occasion he entered her chamber by the chimney hole, bearing in
+his hands green branches, and he was dressed in green leaves. Jennifer
+and the demon walked around and around the bed. He promised to be her
+loving husband until death, to avenge her of her enemies, and she
+promised to be his obedient wife until death and after death, and to
+deny God and Christ Jesus. Then upon the hearth she made him a cake,
+and in the cake they put blood drawn from the veins of both their arms.
+They ate this cake and were man and wife. His name was Karlycuke. But
+Fair Jennifer of Bageley Wood has been dead three hundred years. Such
+a thing cannot happen to-day. Doll thought otherwise, but kept her own
+counsel. Nor was she wrong.
+
+On the way back to the hut on the waste land, Doll asked her how it was
+she could always remember these old stories. The woman said she had
+told them many, many times. ‘To other children, as once you told them
+to me?’ ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘to other children.’ Then she set down her
+basket and put her arms about Doll. She said once she had a son, but
+she would say no more of him and Doll guessed he was a long time dead.
+
+One night, a night of full moon, Doll woke and found the fiend there in
+the room beside her bed. He signed her to silence, but Doll, who had
+many times by night stolen out of the house, knew that Hannah in her
+attic room slept soundly. All that the black and scaly fiend did for
+Jennifer, he now did for his love, and more. He set his imp upon the
+bedpost for a witness, and on the whole nothing could have been more
+seemly. There was no hearth in Doll’s chamber. They could bake no cake.
+He pricked his wrist and her wrist, and each drank a little from the
+other’s veins. This slight cut upon her wrist never healed, as would a
+normal cut. It was red and angry to the day she died. Thus does Nature
+(which usually essays to heal) shrink from the lips of Hell.
+
+It was the last of June, and the summer solstice (for on that day he
+married her) was passed. The leaves broadened into summer and the
+night air no longer held the rhapsody of spring. Now Doll had always
+known that he must leave her, but it hurt her to find that he could go
+without farewell. She comforted herself with the memory of his sweet
+love and her hopes for the future.
+
+
+6
+
+_The Quenching of three Evil Firebrands._
+
+There were hanged upon a spit of mud in the tidal waters of the Charles
+at Boston, on the tenth day of July, 1671, three pirates, long wanted
+for their unparalleled offences. These three, Black Pig Murch, Ben
+Bottle, and the Bloody Shad, had been taken into custody some two
+months earlier, but, having escaped their guardians, separated each to
+his own hiding. By agreement they came together again upon the second
+of July, thinking the hunt to be up and that they could get a pinnace
+and sail south to safety. So all three were taken together, but the
+fourth, Calico Jack, was never taken. Being duly indicted and tried,
+these fine rogues were found guilty of many homicides, robberies, and
+cruel acts of mayhem upon the high seas, so were condemned to hang.
+
+Justice was done upon their bodies, and in due time (after the corpses
+had hung in chains some weeks, serving as due warning to others,
+especially to seamen) these bodies were buried in mud, close to the
+place where they had died.
+
+_Sic transeunt maleficii mundi!_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+1
+
+_A Trap is set for two Tender Souls._
+
+Doll never thought the demon would wait until her death-bed to come
+to her. Every moonlight night and every sunny day she looked for him
+and thought, ‘Perhaps this day or this night he will come to me.’ She
+always wore even quite commonly her prettiest, most worldly clothes,
+and she kept her shaggy black hair as neat as she was able. She
+thought, ‘He sees me always, everything I do, everything I wear,’ and
+she kept herself comely for him. She guessed he even knew her thoughts,
+and so she dedicated them to him.
+
+In her own chamber she daily worshipped and prayed to Satan, as the
+fiend had taught her; that is, by foul blasphemies, such as the
+reversal of the Lord’s Prayer, etc. She even wrote little hymns to
+Satan and entuned them for him. She felt that she should be about some
+harm, such, for instance, as the bewitchment of the godly, but she
+received no command, so she did, for some time at least, no devilment.
+She was happy and grew sleek.
+
+The widow was already courted by three men, all reputable widowers and
+church members. Now that the windows were opened and Doll sang as she
+worked, and her own mind was taken up with her suitors, she did not
+fear her so much. Each went her own way.
+
+Doll had always shown a dawdling and trifling attitude towards honest
+labour. And in this offence Bilby had encouraged her. For he had had
+her out in the woods and the fields (where there was nothing a young
+female could do) with himself, instead of leaving her at home to serve
+Hannah, as would have been more proper.
+
+Now that he was gone, Doll still continued in her childish and
+frivolous wanderings. She often sat herself on the stone fence by the
+willow brook which divided the lands of the Bilbys and the Thumbs. The
+bonded boys upon the farm said they often saw her sitting upon the
+stone fence and feeding small rotten apples to Ahab (whose ferocity
+now had grown hideous). Yet this girl patted him freely, talking to
+him, laying her face against his cheek, and all these attentions Ahab
+accepted of. She wished him for her familiar, but the creature (so she
+told Mr. Zelley) would never do one of the things she asked of him,
+except to pursue and render ridiculous young Thumb.
+
+Mrs. Thumb heard that her black bull was often down on the boundary
+with Bilby’s Doll. She asked that he be penned, for she guessed that
+Doll was at the bottom of Ahab’s remarkable dissatisfaction in Titus.
+She wished the bull withdrawn from the young woman’s influence. By so
+doing and thus making these fields by the willow brook safe to cross,
+she did great harm to her own household, for now it was Labour and
+Sorrow who came daily (if they could) to see Doll. Undoubtedly she
+had been waiting for the twins to come and play with her. She must
+have seen in these weak and disobedient little girls fit matter for
+her to work upon to the further enlargement of the Kingdom of Hell.
+For she lay in wait there, and finally they came to her. They came
+slyly. No one at first knew they came, and they played at ungodly
+games, furtively, where no one of either house could know. Thus passed
+September, and October, and the half of November.
+
+
+2
+
+_The Horrible Example of the Thumb Twins, or to what a Pass
+Disobedience may bring a Child._
+
+Doubtless some who read these words will recall how in childhood they
+were brought to obedience and wholesome respect for authority by
+hearing a mother, or grannie, or aunt, or servant tell them the awful
+story of the Thumb twins, and to what their disobedience brought them.
+It is true that these children had never been well, and for them to
+fall from health to point of death was not a long fall. Nor when one
+considers what good use has been made of their example, and how many
+other children have learned decent docility from their story, can one
+wholly regret the incident which occurred as follows.
+
+On the twentieth day of November (the day had been a mellow, warm,
+yellow day) the disobedient Labour and Sorrow went to the willow brook,
+and there found, as they hoped to find, the witch-woman awaiting them.
+She was all in fine scarlet as her fancy was. The children said they
+dared not stay and play—their mother had sent them to Goody Greene’s to
+buy mints. She would wonder if they did not return within the hour.
+They said (a long time later) that Doll smiled at them in a terrible
+fashion and suggested to them that what their mother wanted was of no
+importance. But the twins for once were mindful of their good mother’s
+wishes. They said again they could not stay. They had only come to tell
+her that they could not stay. ‘Well, take that then,’ said the witch,
+and angrily tossed across the brook and to their feet two dolls that
+she had contrived out of corn husks and pumpkin seeds. So she went
+away, and the twins went to Greene’s.
+
+[Illustration: Woman with two kids and a cow]
+
+They came home again and they were late as usual, or rather as always,
+for they were dawdling, mischievous children. Their mother was angry
+with them. She could not whip nor even shake them. She dared not,
+they were too feeble. She put them to bed without their dinner and
+there they lay to supper-time, talking and whispering, laughing to each
+other. She bade them get up for supper. They would not, but lay in
+their bed. No one thought further of them until morning. The truth is
+that, having no dinner and no supper, they grew hungry and so they ate
+the dollies, which were made mostly of pumpkin seeds. The pumpkin in
+all its parts, even the seeds of it, is wholesome food. It could not be
+this that sickened the children, yet from that day they sickened.
+
+For forty-eight hours they were afflicted in their stomachs. This
+passing a little, an even more grievous malady seized their bowels,
+which seemed to rot away. Their very bones gave out from within them,
+refusing to support their weight, etc. They pined, would not eat
+because of the pain they were in. First it was ‘My belly, mamma, oh,
+my belly!’ and the next, ‘My throat, mamma!’ or ‘My head, mamma, my
+miserable bowels! My vitals are decaying within me.’ These frightful
+pains were the result of their disobedience, for if they had done as
+bidden—that is, if they had eschewed the young woman and received no
+presents from her—they never would have so suffered.
+
+They had thus sickened and suffered for a week, and then Mrs. Thumb,
+putting fresh linen upon their bed, found, between bed and wall, all
+that remained of the pumpkin-seed poppets. It was plain that these
+two poppets were intended to represent the twins. They were all but
+identical, yet was the one (Sorrow) plumper than the other (Labour).
+They had dark eyes, made from little buttons, and light hair fashioned
+from corn silk. In this respect they simulated the brown eyes and
+yellow hair of the twins. The one was tied about the waist with a red
+rag, and the other with a blue, and it was thus in these two colours
+Mrs. Thumb habitually dressed them.
+
+The twins gaped at their mother as she found these things, and their
+eyes were guilty eyes. She asked them from whence came these dollies.
+They swore they did not know. Perhaps a cat had brought them in. They
+were sure a cat had brought them in. Their mother told them they were
+lying and they said nothing. She said she would shake them, and they
+said that they were far too sick, and Labour offered to fall into a
+spasm. Well, if they would not tell from whence these things were,
+would they tell who it was that had eaten out the pumpkin seeds that
+had made their vitals. The twins responded heartily, yes, it was they
+themselves who had eaten up the vitals. The woman cried out in anguish,
+‘My children, oh, my poor children, it is your own vitals that you have
+eaten, God help us all!’ And she rushed from the sick-room, weeping,
+wringing her hands, screaming to her husband, her son.
+
+For three days the twins would not say from whence were these poppets.
+Their mother fancied it was old Goody Greene had given them, because
+she knew that the girls had been to her evil hut on the very day they
+sickened. Now Greene, as well as Mr. Kleaver, had been called in every
+few days to advise in the care of the twins. Mrs. Thumb was enraged
+to think that she had thus allowed the woman access to her darlings.
+But Widow Bilby told her to look to Doll, for she knew that she had in
+her own room pumpkin seeds with red and blue rags, and corn silk. She
+warned her, ‘Look to Doll.’
+
+In her heart the woman was convinced that her little ones suffered
+from witchcraft. Mr. Zelley, who showed at that time a most stubborn
+disbelief in such infernal manifestations, or perhaps wishing to
+protect the wicked, pooh-poohed the idea. Mr. Kleaver also said that
+such wasting fevers were indeed far from rare. By the New Year he
+promised the twins would be well or in their coffins. He himself had
+seen no signs of demoniacal possession.
+
+The woman asked the children—for who should know as well as they? At
+first they stoutly denied the idea and then weakened, admitting that it
+was possible. When their mother pressed them further, they put their
+heads under the bedclothing and remained mute. The mother decided to
+spy upon them to see if between themselves they might not prove more
+honest.
+
+She told them she was going abroad. And she left the door of the
+chamber open into the fire-room. Having bid them farewell and slammed
+the front door, she returned on tiptoe to the stool she had set herself
+behind the chamber door. There she listened. They talked little and
+but casually. And then at last Labour said, ‘I wish we had not eaten
+the pretty poppets Mistress Dolly made us. I wish we had them to play
+with.’ So she knew that in truth the poppets were from Doll. Nothing
+more of consequence was said.
+
+That very night, however, they woke up the whole house, screaming that
+a great tawny cat had come down the chimney and had sat upon their
+chests, kneading its paws and purring most hideous. Father, mother, and
+brother flew to them. They saw no cat, but there were two red fresh
+scratches on the face of Labour. Their father reproved them for their
+fancies, reminding his wife how since early childhood they had been
+subject to night fears. The children were ashamed. They put their heads
+under the bedclothing. From then on, however (when their father was
+not present), they often spoke of this cat, and suggested even more
+horrible visions that came to torment them. Every day their plight was
+more piteous.
+
+Almost in the middle of December, close to the shortest day of the
+year, the woman sat by her hearth, pondering these things. She was
+determined to find the truth for herself. Husband, doctor, and minister
+were all wilfully blind.
+
+The children lay sick in the next room, and often seemed like to die.
+The one said to the other, ‘She will come again to-night.’ At the
+word ‘she’ the woman pricked her ears. It was only of the cat they had
+spoken before, and this cat they called ‘he.’ The child said, ‘She will
+bring her baby and let us play with it.’ The other said, ‘Oh, I hope
+she will not come. Although she seems kind to us, I am afraid that it
+is she who hurts us, for God knows we are bewitched.’ (She vomited a
+little.)
+
+The woman went to the door, saying, ‘Pretty pets, who comes to you,
+and of whom is this baby?’ She spoke quietly. They hid their heads and
+would not answer. The woman went again to the fireplace and listened.
+‘I think,’ said one, ‘it is her cat that comes to hurt us,’ and the
+children whispered together. The woman trembled with excitement. She
+did not go immediately to the children! Instead she sat close by the
+fire and listened. Sorrow said, ‘And the little black man with the
+little black hat....’ She could hear no more. But later Sorrow was
+saying, ‘Little people came, no bigger than my finger. They ate a
+little feast of honey and suet, served out to them in acorn cups—like
+those Mistress Dolly makes for us....’ And later, ‘There was a tiny
+queen. She looked just like Mistress Dolly, only smaller, a Mistress
+Dolly you could put away in a teacup, and her baby was no bigger than a
+thumb nail....’ The mother now felt she had proof. She hurried to her
+children, begging them to tell her all. Could Mistress Dolly, then,
+shrink no bigger than a poppet? And who was the little black man? At
+first the children would not speak, but, as was usual, stubbornly hid
+their heads.
+
+She wept and prayed over them, begging them to be frank with her, for,
+if it were only known who bewitched them and how, they might be cured.
+As it was they would grow sicker and weaker, and finally languish and
+die. They protested they did not want to die, and began to weep and
+cast themselves about. And at last they confessed to everything (but
+in the midst, Labour was thrown into a grievous fit). They told how it
+was Bilby’s Doll had given them the poppets; how she came to them every
+night—not cruelly using them, but amusing and diverting them. ‘And she
+had with her a book ...’ said Sorrow. ‘My children, my poor miserable
+children ... was it a black book, and have you signed?’ Yes, it was a
+black book. No, they had not signed.
+
+Then the pious woman got out the Bible, and she made them kiss it and
+swear that no matter how ill-used they were, or how delicately they
+were tempted by the witch, they would remain fast-sealed to God and not
+sign away their souls to Hell—no matter if devils did come and pull
+their vitals up by the roots and run needles through their eyeballs
+and brain-pans. The children, lamenting, shrieking, and yet for once
+obedient, promised and swore as they were bid.
+
+
+3
+
+_A Hideous Malady and a Bridle for it._
+
+From the day mentioned above Doll made no further pretence at kindness,
+for she began to come to these twins in hideous and cruel aspect. The
+deacons of the Church, the elders, the constables, the neighbours, took
+turn and turn about, in praying with them. These good words would often
+frighten away the witch, with her black book and infernal troop, and
+the little ones would rest a little or even sleep.
+
+At last was the godly father of the haunted children convinced that
+this was witchcraft. He or his son Titus sat night and day with a
+bastard musket in the hand and a silver bullet in it.
+
+At last was Mr. Kleaver convinced, and the doctor from Salem was
+convinced, and Mr. Increase Mather from Boston was convinced, that
+here at Cowan Corners was being enacted the most heinous and wicked
+witchcraft ever practised by any one in the New World. Here was indeed
+a witchcraft. Where was the witch?
+
+Doll Bilby claimed that at this time she knew the children to be sick,
+but because week in and week out no one spoke to her (she went no more
+to Meeting) she had not guessed they were bewitched nor that she was
+talked about. She said she was sorry for what she mockingly called ‘her
+little friends.’ So she made a junket, and a fowl being killed she made
+a broth and put expensive cloves and nutmegs in this broth. She laid
+these things in a basket and asked the youngest of the farm servants to
+go present this basket to the Thumb twins, but not to say from whom it
+was.
+
+When the mother saw the basket she cried out. Upon the handle of the
+basket in pretty Indian fashion were strung blue beads, identical
+with those the poor little wretches had but lately spewed forth.
+The children set up a great clamour at the sight of this food, for,
+although so hard to tempt, this particular food they would eat. She
+consulted Mr. Zelley (it was the last time she ever consulted him). He
+said it was good food and let the children eat. So they ate and quickly
+fell to sleep. That night they woke in horrid writhing fits, and almost
+died. Not only did they see Doll Bilby as she floated about over their
+bed, but Deacon Pentwhistle saw her and three others. Also Mr. Minchon,
+on going to the horse barn to get out his horse and ride home (for it
+was late), was bitten mysteriously in the arm. Lot Charty, a poor boy,
+that same night saw a fiery rat, and he said to this same rat, ‘Who are
+you?’ The rat said, ‘I am who I am.’ And he said, ‘Whom serve you?’ And
+the creature replied, ‘I serve Hell and the will of Bilby’s Doll.’ Then
+with a clap like thunder he was up the fire hole.
+
+A woman by the Ipswich Road that selfsame night sat nursing a feeble
+babe. She said the room grew light and there before her stood an
+awful female form. She never had set an eye upon Bilby’s Doll, but by
+description she knew that this was she or her apparition. The child
+in her arms gave a great screech and the female form made off. Then
+(although it was midwinter) to the mother’s apprehension, lightning
+came and struck the babe, squeezing it flat as a plank so it died.
+
+Doubtless there were many devils abroad. The blessed God permitted
+their escapement from Hell that they might give bodily confutation to
+all atheists who should say ‘there is no God.’ So must ever the Prince
+of Lies and his servants serve the will of God. Because of the powers
+of an invisible Kingdom manifested in the years 1671-72, the churches
+were gorged with the pious and the entire community awoke to an awful
+realization of the potency of God.
+
+_Non est religio ubi omnia patent._ (Which might be translated, Where
+there is no mystery there is no religion.)
+
+All in all there seemed no proof lacking that Cowan Corners and more
+particularly the Thumb twins were suffering from a cruel demoniacal
+tormentation. Mr. Kleaver and the Salem doctor, the deacons, the
+elders, Captain Buzzey, the marshal, and others gave affidavit in
+writing to the magistrates that the woman Bilby was a witch of provable
+perversity and that she should be set in jail. Mr. Zelley alone among
+all the men of standing had nothing to do with the signing and
+drawing-up of this paper. In fact, such was his strange, distrait, and
+heretical attitude, no one asked him to assist. Already it was bruited
+abroad that he was a man to be looked at, for, after all, have not some
+of the most potent wizards done their blasphemies under a cloak of
+piety?
+
+[Illustration: People on horseback]
+
+So Captain Tom Buzzey, of the Train-Band troop (and he was also
+sheriff), taking two constables with him, rode to the house of Widow
+Bilby and there served warrant upon the young woman. She showed neither
+surprise nor terror, but looked up at her captors fearlessly. She
+wanted to know of what she was accused. She was primarily accused of
+afflicting the Thumb twins. Why, then she was as innocent as a babe
+unborn. She would have explained to the sheriff that she had been the
+friend of these little ones ever since they could toddle. The sheriff
+told her that all were agreed that they were bewitched. If not she, who
+was it? Then she became confused and in the end said, ‘It was the work
+of _another witch_,’ thereby denying all and confessing all.
+
+Captain Buzzey, as he had been instructed, searched her chamber and the
+house. He did not find the pumpkin seeds, corn husks, etc., etc., that
+Widow Bilby said the girl kept under her bed to work evil out of. It is
+likely the young woman really did know that her name was talked about
+and had rid herself of them.
+
+She rode upon a pillion back of Captain Buzzey. A great jeering crowd
+had gathered to see her off to Salem jail. Widow Bilby laughed loudly
+from where she stood in the crowd between two of her suitors, ‘You’ve
+got it now, you jade, you jade!’ she cried.
+
+Captain Buzzey said the girl bowed her head and he heard her whisper,
+‘He has not abandoned me. My god, my god, protect me and save me.’
+Thinking that she was referring to our Lord Jesus Christ and to the
+true God, he, in his heart, pitied her. She begged Captain Buzzey to
+hurry. ‘Oh, for pity’s sake take me out of this crowd.’ He clapped
+spurs to his stallion, and the young horse, in spite of his double
+load, put off at a gallop. The day was a winter day, crisp and cold,
+and the snow was fresh and spotless under the horses’ hooves. So at a
+tremendous pace the cavalcade of armed men and the one prisoner passed
+through dark woods and by a winter sea. They rode for six miles and
+came to Salem, where again they encountered angry faces, hoots, gibes,
+and threats of instant death.
+
+That night she lay upon straw and without a mattress. The dungeon was
+so cold the water froze in the jug. She could not sleep for cold, but
+spent hours upon her knees in prayer (as the jailor later reported),
+yet now it is known it was to her demon or to Satan that she prayed. At
+last a heavenly quiet descended upon her and she slept.
+
+Concurrent to her jailing, the Thumb twins were a little eased in their
+misery. It would seem that the witch had been put to fright at the fear
+of bodily incarceration and pain, and that she had diminished the force
+and malignancy of her spells.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+1
+
+JUSTICE _arrives. She will not be stayed nor thrown from her scent,
+although the morning wears slowly and some fear_ JUSTICE _will be
+balked._
+
+On the twenty-seventh day of December, 1672, Judge Lollimour and
+Judge Bride, of the Court of Assistants, Boston, entered with pomp
+into Salem. They were escorted by the Boston marshal, by constables,
+aides, etc., in full regalia. This pretty cavalcade drew rein by the
+horse-block of the Black Moon, where ordinarily preliminary hearings
+were conducted.
+
+Judge Bride (this was the great Judge Bride) said to Judge Lollimour,
+his colleague, ‘Sir, what will we do with this great crowd gathered
+hereabout, waiting to hear the findings of Justice?’
+
+‘Sir,’ said Judge Lollimour, ‘the tap-room of the Black Moon could not
+accommodate one fifth of this great multitude. Let us move on to the
+Meeting-House.’
+
+After them straggled the populace of some five villages—yes, and
+learned men, elders, doctors, jurists, etc., out from Boston. The
+crowd was black with the gowns of the clergy.
+
+Every seat in the Meeting-House was quickly taken. The aisles were
+filled. Body pressed close to body, rendering breathing difficult. In
+this way a stale heat was engendered, and a fear, and an expectation.
+One said to another it was a fatal day. Some would have left if it had
+been allowed them, but the room being filled the Judges ordered the
+constables to permit neither egress nor entry. They feared a milling
+about and a turmoil that would be a detriment to the dignity of the
+Court.
+
+The magistrates were set in great chairs before the pulpit. At their
+feet were pallets whereon the sick children should be laid when their
+time came to testify. The constables pulled a table (a heavy oak table)
+close to the magistrates. Upon this the accused should stand in the
+sight of all men—yes, and in the sight of God.
+
+Certain men cried out, ‘Make way! Make way!’ and in came Captain Buzzey
+and the prisoner. She looked most wild and shaggy and of a touchingly
+small size. Captain Buzzey lifted her to the table set for her, and
+then, addressing the Court, showed true warrant for her arrest and
+swore that as commanded he had diligently searched the house for
+poppets, images, etc.; having found what he found, he now produced
+these things in the bundle which he laid at their honours’ feet.
+
+Judge Bride, looking about him at the many black-robed clergy, said,
+‘Gentlemen of the ministry, who among you officiating in these parts
+is senior?’ He was told Mr. Zelley was senior in these parts, but that
+the famous Mr. Increase Mather was present. ‘Sir,’ said Judge Bride,
+‘will you, Mr. Zelley, offer up a prayer?’ Mr. Zelley prayed, begging
+God to discover evil where there was evil and innocency where there was
+innocency. He prayed that the prisoner confess if she might be guilty,
+but if she were innocent, God strengthen her not to confess merely to
+save her life. To this prayer the magistrates gave fervent amen.
+
+Judge Lollimour thus addressed the prisoner at the bar: ‘You
+understand, Doll Bilby, whereof you are now charged, that is, to be
+guilty of sundry acts of witchcraft, more specifically the wasting and
+afflicting of twin sisters, Labour and Sorrow Thumb. What say you to
+it?’
+
+‘I am as innocent as the babe unborn.’
+
+‘You are now in the hands of authority and, God helping, you shall have
+justice, and the afflicted shall have justice. May God help us all.’
+
+Then Judge Lollimour called on many witnesses. He called on Mr. Kleaver
+the surgeon, and the older doctor from Salem whose name was Bunion. He
+called upon the Thumbs and upon Widow Bilby. This latter woman showed
+such spite and malice in her testimony that Judge Bride frowned upon
+her and reproved her. Thus, instead of hurting the accused, she helped
+her, for the Judges felt some pity for the tousled, wild child (she
+seemed but a child) perched upon the table in the sight of all men—yes,
+and in the sight of God.
+
+Mr. Zelley was called. He was a bony man of fifty years, and his hair
+was white. In contrast to the big fine presence of Mr. Mather and
+many another clergyman then present, he seemed a poor thing; that is,
+uncertain, ill at ease. He spoke in a low voice, saying how good had
+been this young woman as a child. How in earliest womanhood she had
+shown a most exemplary piety. How she was often at her prayers, and
+came to him for religious comfort, etc. As he spoke, he twisted his
+hands in his sleeves as a boy might. Then he said in a defiant voice
+that the girl had since childhood endured the most cruel abuse from her
+foster mother—that is, from this same Widow Bilby, who had but lately
+been heard. This last statement had much weight with the Judges, who
+thereafter did not permit Widow Bilby to testify, or, if they did,
+they took her words with knowing glance. By this dismissal of Hannah
+they also dismissed the earlier tales of Doll’s witchcraft. Although
+they heard how the green fruit of Hannah’s womb was blasted, how she
+had suffered a wretched and unaccountable illness, it was evident they
+were not impressed—rather were they bored. To the death of Mr. Bilby
+they listened with more attention, questioning a number (especially Mr.
+Kleaver and Mr. Zelley) with some pains. When they heard that the dying
+man with his last breath denied any witchcraft, they would not permit
+Hannah to explain how it may be that an evil spirit enter a corpse and
+then cry out.
+
+[Illustration: Two men talking]
+
+At noon, while they ate their bloaters and drank their rum punch at the
+Black Moon, the barmaid heard Judge Bride say to Judge Lollimour that
+it was easy to see through the whole miserable affair. _In primo_: This
+rustic town was so tedious they had to patch up an excitement—he would
+begin seeing devils himself if he lived there. _Secundo_: This jealous,
+scolding widow was at the bottom of it. _Tertio_: The wench indeed
+looked like a goblin, and, no matter how pious a life she might lead,
+village gossips would always speak ill of her—especially, as in her own
+ungodly way she was a pretty mouse. _Quarto_: They would both of them
+be back in Boston within the three-day, the case being dismissed and
+the local people reproved for their gullibility. Said Judge Lollimour,
+‘Sir, we have not as yet seen these afflicted children.’ Judge Bride
+said, ‘Blah,’ draining the last of his rum punch.
+
+
+2
+
+ _From Noon to Sundown rages a famous battle, with Righteousness and
+ Justice on the one hand and Witchcraft and Evil upon the other._
+
+On the afternoon of the same day, Doll Bilby was set again upon the
+table. The crowd within the Meeting-House was even greater than it had
+been in the morning. Many had not even gone out for dinner, so ravenous
+was their hunger to hear the findings of Justice and to observe the
+conduct of a witch.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Once again are we assembled in the eyes of all men and
+ in the eyes of God to administer justice as well as mortal man (a
+ puny, weak, and miserable creation) is able. Mr. Mather, of Boston,
+ sir, we beg your blessing and your prayers.
+
+Then Mr. Mather prayed most decently, and as if in sight of God’s
+most awful throne. To this prayer the Judges gave amen and bade the
+sheriff go and fetch the bodies of the Thumb twins, who should next be
+questioned. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings wise men may be
+instructed, and an innocent child may speak with greater knowledge
+than is given to the cloudy heart of maturity. Mrs. Thumb was asked
+to tell all she might concerning the health and humour of these twins
+since birth. These things she told. She told of the past-nature love
+her son Titus bore this woman now accused, and at the moment the
+sheriff entered and the cry ‘Make way!’ went up. After him was Deacon
+Thumb, and he bore Sorrow Thumb, and after him was Titus. He bore
+Labour Thumb. It was explained that the children were taken in fits at
+the threshold of the courtroom. They lay in a swoon as though dead,
+their faces green with pallor, their eyes closed. The bearers laid them
+on the pallets.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Titus Thumb, stand up and answer me. You see this
+ woman who stands thus before and above you all. Now is she charged
+ with crimes which, if proven, shall cost her her life, yet a year and
+ a little more and she was your dear heart and you were about to wed
+ with her. You have heard your mother say that this Bilby won you by
+ wicked spells, that once she assumed the shape of an Indian and you
+ shot her through the heart—yet she did not suffer for it. That again
+ she perversely set upon you, tempting and staying you beyond the puny
+ endurance of our sex, and you struck her a blow that would have killed
+ an ox, yet _she_ rose up unharmed. We have listened to some length of
+ how violent and beyond the usual wants of nature was your desire for
+ her. Your flesh fell away, etc. What do you now say? Are these things
+ true?
+
+ _Thumb_: Sir, as God hears me, these things are true.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: There has been no enlargement upon fact?
+
+ _Thumb_: None.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: It does not seem to you that you mistook for
+ enchantment what another would call lust? Possibly you are a young man
+ of gross sensual nature, who might strike what he loved?
+
+ _Thumb_: God knows I am the least sensual of all men. I have never
+ sought out women. Ask any here.
+
+At that a girl was possessed and now a demon began manifestly to speak
+in her. The demon belched forth most horrid and nefarious blasphemies.
+The constable took her out. A dozen cried to the Judges, begging to
+vouch for the young man’s purity. All were silenced.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Thumb, I see your eyes avoid to look towards this young
+ woman. Perhaps your heart regrets that you give testimony most like to
+ lead her in the halter. Look upon her now. Is she not your enemy? Tell
+ her she is a witch and that you wish her hanged for it.
+
+ _Thumb_ (after a most tedious pause, looked to her feet): You are a
+ witch.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Better than that, louder and firmer. Come, you shall
+ look upon her face. You shall not mock this Court.
+
+ _Thumb_: Sir, I cannot.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: What, are you still bewitched, or is it that you still
+ love her and will not harm her?
+
+ _Thumb_: I love her. (He put his arm across his eyes. He wept.)
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Get to your chair again. How can you who love her give
+ good and valid testimony? Get to your chair again. Your mother, she is
+ made of sterner stuff. I see the children stir. They are about to be
+ recovered to consciousness. Sheriff, cover the face and body of the
+ accused so that they may not see her until the time comes.
+
+Captain Buzzey took off his scarlet cape. It was a good new cape that
+had cost him two pounds. Within the month it rotted mysteriously, and
+the Assistants bought him another one. With this scarlet cape he now
+covered Bilby’s Doll from head to foot.
+
+ _Labour_: Oh, for Christ’s dear sake, sister, where are we now? Oh,
+ for God’s sake....
+
+ _Sorrow_: Oh, my back, oh, my bowels!
+
+The children aroused themselves a little, sat up, and gazed about the
+court. Now it is noticeable that Judge Lollimour took to himself the
+questioning of the children. The reason is he had seven such at home,
+while the great Judge Bride had none.
+
+ _Judge Lollimour_: Children, do not be afraid, for is there none among
+ us but wish you well. You are only to speak the truth as your good
+ mother has taught you—the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
+
+ _Sorrow_ (in loud, bold voice): There is one here who does not wish us
+ well. I can feel her presence.
+
+The Judge gave no heed, although many were amazed that the child had
+not seen Doll, yet knew there was one there who did not wish her well.
+
+ _Judge Lollimour_: You have been strangely sick, and I see you are not
+ well. What, think you, caused this sickness?
+
+ _Sorrow_: Oh, sir, have you not heard? We are bewitched. She gave us
+ our own vitals to eat, and she comes at night and torments us.
+
+ _Judge Lollimour_: You say ‘she,’ yet half the world are ‘she.’ To
+ whom do you refer?
+
+ _Sorrow_: I can’t say her name, oh-oh-oh....
+
+She gagged and went purple in the face, she clawed at her windpipe.
+
+ _Labour_: Oh, don’t you see, don’t you see, the witch has her by the
+ throat? She won’t let her answer. Oh, sir, she’ll die. (The puny child
+ struck the air above her sister’s head.) Go away, you wicked witch, go
+ away!
+
+ _Judge Lollimour_: Now that you are restored, I shall name some to
+ you, and when you reach the name of her whom you think torments you,
+ you shall make a sign. Abigail Stone, Sarah Black, Obedience Lovejoy,
+ Alice May, Delilah Broadbent, Doll Bilby....
+
+Then the afflicted did cry out, and fell back weak and dumb.
+
+ _Judge Lollimour_: So you accuse Doll Bilby, that she bewitches you,
+ causing your sickness? What else does she do to you?
+
+ _Sorrow_: She will have us sign in the Black Book.
+
+ _Judge Lollimour_: Come, you contrive a fancy. I do not believe she
+ comes with a black book. Tell me how.
+
+ _Sorrow_: She comes with devils and imps and hideous animals, and they
+ torment us, pressing out our lives, sticking pins and knives into us,
+ and while they torment us she presses close to us, bidding us sign her
+ book. But we will none of her, and God helps us and will save us.
+
+ _Judge Lollimour_: You claim that this woman comes to you by night,
+ bringing such with her as prick and torment you. How does she come, in
+ her own proper form?
+
+ _Sorrow_: At first she would come as a great tawny cat, and then again
+ as a pig, or as a mouse, and once I remember she came as a black dog.
+ And she brings fiends with her, hairy little black men, and these
+ torment us. Of late I think she comes only in her own proper form.
+ Sometimes it is hard to tell, for she can at will assume any shape.
+ And sometimes a hand puts into the bed amongst us and pulls at our
+ vitals.
+
+ _Judge Lollimour_: When this woman came to you and offered you a book
+ to sign (as you claim), what would she say?
+
+ _Sorrow_: She would say, ‘Sign.’
+
+ _Judge Lollimour_: And no other word?
+
+ _Sorrow_: Sometimes she would say, ‘Sign, or I’ll squeeze your vitals
+ for you.’
+
+ _Judge Lollimour_: But you, being good and Christian girls, would not
+ sign?
+
+ _Labour_: Oh, sir, once a most awful and majestic voice spoke out, and
+ I do believe it was the voice of God, and He bade us not to sign. Then
+ the fiend flew away in a clap and did not return for a three-day.
+
+Their mother said, yes, this was true. She herself heard the clap and
+it was three days before the affliction again commenced.
+
+ _Judge Lollimour_: And if you sign, what does she promise you?
+
+ _Sorrow_: Prettiest things to play with—little goats, no larger than
+ a cat and a cat as small as a kit, and brooms to ride on through the
+ sky—and her own pretty babe to play with.
+
+ _Judge Lollimour_: And when you refuse to sign?
+
+ _Sorrow_: Oh, she pinches and torments us, or lets her fiends and
+ familiars torment us. They but do her bidding and I do not think are
+ as wicked as she. Once she set my father’s great black bull Ahab upon
+ us. He tramples us like to break our bones.
+
+The mother interrupted to say, yes, this was true. The bull was a
+witch’s familiar beyond good doubt, and they but waited the finding of
+the Court before they butchered him.
+
+ _Sorrow_: Sometimes the witch shakes us cruelly.
+
+ _Thumb_: Sir, it is true. Those small and puny girls were so shaken
+ two strong men could not hold them in their beds.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: What, young Thumb, is this girl, even though proved a
+ witch, so strong, she can best two strong men—how think you?
+
+ _Thumb_: Sir, I think the Devil helps her and he gives her strength.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: You who were once her lover—you should know her
+ strength. Was she then so brawny-strong those times you bundled her?
+
+Titus was confused. He believed the Court to be against him. The
+congregation was angry, for bundling is a pleasantry for yokels, and no
+more likely to occur in Salem than in Boston, nor in the Thumb house
+than in the house of Bride or Lollimour. It was felt the Judge intended
+an insult. Some feared the magistrates might dismiss the whole case but
+from caprice. But Judge Bride was a godly man, who would not lift his
+nose from a scent until Justice herself was satisfied, although those
+who knew him best said he often seemed to pause and idly bay the moon.
+
+ _Thumb_: I never got such favour from her.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: One more thing you shall tell us, although you are not
+ a likely witness. Is it true, as your mother has said, that you shot
+ silver bullets up the fire hole, and that upon occasion you think you
+ struck the accused?
+
+ _Thumb_: It is true, sir, but I shot only three silver bullets—these
+ were buttons from my coat. My sisters cried, ‘There she goes up the
+ flue.’ I fired where they pointed and they exclaimed that I had struck
+ her on the wrist. Some here will tell you that there was indeed the
+ next day a bullet-gouge on her wrist, nor has it yet healed—to this
+ day. I saw it when you bade me look at her. You may see this mark
+ yourself. Her apparition came commonly to afflict my sisters in an old
+ black riding-hood.
+
+Captain Buzzey said he had the very one with him in the bundle at their
+honours’ feet. He took it out, and Labour and Sorrow both said, yes, it
+was the very one. Captain Buzzey held it up before the magistrates. It
+was riddled with bullet holes.
+
+ _Captain Buzzey_: Widow Bilby gave me this coat. See, it is burnt with
+ fire, shot full of holes as a sieve, and still smells of soot from the
+ Thumb chimney, and gunpowder from Thumb’s musket.
+
+ _A boy_ (crying out from the back of the court): I know that coat,
+ sir, well.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: And who may you be?
+
+ _The boy_: Jake Tulley, bonded man to Widow Bilby, and I know that
+ coat for the one our scarecrow has worn these three years, and but
+ yesterday I saw the coat gone and the scarecrow naked. Mate and I
+ (that is the other farmhand) often shot at it for practice. Why, it
+ means nothing that it is full of holes.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: And are you and Mate such miserable poor shots you must
+ press your pieces into the very belly of the scarecrow to be assured
+ of your aim? Look, how the powder has burned the cloth.
+
+The Judges took the coat up between them and discussed in low voices.
+Jake sat down in confusion.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Mr. Kleaver, you have already given generously of your
+ knowledge. You have told us in what way the maladies arising from
+ witchcraft differ from those arising from the proper body—in other
+ words, what are the differences between diseases inflicted by the
+ Devil for wicked ends, and those by Jehovah for our own good. And
+ you have told us how you came to recognize the case in hand as one
+ provoked by art. Will you tell us further?
+
+ _Mr. Kleaver_: Invisible hands often clutched the twins by the throat.
+ I have seen them.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: The invisible hands?
+
+ _Mr. Kleaver_: No. I have seen the throats. And I have also taken the
+ needles, pins, and such from their flesh. These children have vomited
+ strange things—fur, insects, glass, long hanks of hair—blue beads....
+ (He stooped to the bundle at their honours’ feet.) Sirs, here is the
+ basket in which the young woman sent poisoned or possessed food to
+ the afflicted—mark the blue beads on the handle. Three days earlier,
+ the one of them spewed forth these blue beads I now take from my
+ pocket—mark, gentlemen—they are identical.
+
+ _Mrs. Thumb_: There was never a bead like that before in my house.
+
+She wept. The children screamed out in gibberish at sight of the beads,
+and fell back upon their pallets.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Mark the children, Mr. Kleaver, are they now, in your
+ opinion, possessed?
+
+ _Mr. Kleaver_: Not exactly possessed. (He whispered to the
+ magistrates.) They are conscious of a malignant presence. They know
+ the witch is in the room.
+
+ _The twins_: Oh, oh, oh, God help us, oh, oh, oh!
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Sheriff, uncover to us the accused. Now, children,
+ stand up, if able, and look there at the table above you.
+
+The room was filled with their piercing din. Labour fell in a fit,
+foaming, rolling her eyes. She was stretched out stark and dead. Sorrow
+flung herself in hideous terror upon the feet of the Judges, crying
+out piteously that they save her. Then she fell back stark and dumb.
+Judge Lollimour was touched by her plight, her fear, and the appeal she
+made to him. He raised her up, felt of her hands and face. They were
+dank with a cold sweat which both Judges knew no art could imitate. Her
+pulse scarce moved. Her tongue was tied in her throat. She could not
+speak. She looked up out of tortured eyes.
+
+ _Mr. Mather_: Here, sir, if ever, is demoniacal possession.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Here is witchcraft—now to find the witch.
+
+ _Mr. Mather_: It has been proved an hundred times in English courts
+ that a spell cast by a witch’s eye must return to the witch’s body—if
+ the witch touch the afflicted.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Sheriff, carry the body of this Labour Thumb to the
+ prisoner. She shall touch her. We shall see. Observe. The child is
+ utterly lifeless now.
+
+ _Captain Buzzey_: She has no pulse, sir.
+
+ _Mrs. Thumb_: Sir, sir, you have let her slay my child before my eyes.
+ Oh, God, oh, God!...
+
+ _Judge Bride_: No one can say that this child knows who touches her.
+ Sheriff, take her, alive or dead, to the prisoner.
+
+Captain Buzzey took her up. The witch readily assented. She reached
+down and touched the child. The colour returned to the child’s face.
+Captain Buzzey felt her pulse leap in her wrist. He felt her heart
+stir under her hand. The child turned in his arms, smiling prettily,
+as though in sleep. With a smile she woke. She glanced to the Judges,
+noted her sister (still in semi-trance). She smiled at her mother. Her
+eyes went up, and there on the table beside and above her was the awful
+vision of Bilby’s Doll. With a wail of terror no art could simulate,
+she clung to Captain Buzzey. At that moment all in the courtroom
+realized how hideous had been her weeks of anguish. No one could so
+fear a person who had never done her harm.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Lay the child upon her pallet—and you, Sorrow, go you
+ now and lie upon your pallet.
+
+ _Sorrow_ (her tongue still tied): Gar, gar, gah, gah, gah.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Labour and Sorrow, as you fell into these fits, tell
+ me what occurred. Did a fiend or familiar come to torment you? Did
+ the accused send her apparition to you, there before your very
+ eyes—leaving her body, as it were, vacant upon the table? Tell us.
+
+Now was Labour also taken with dumbness. All saw how the lower lips
+of the afflicted were sucked in, and the teeth were clamped down upon
+them. Mr. Kleaver essayed to break the lock on their teeth. He could
+not.
+
+ _Widow Bilby_: Look to the witch, look, look!
+
+It was seen the witch bit her lip—thus locking the jaws of the
+children. Captain Buzzey struck her slightly, and bade her loose her
+lip. Then the children were released. They said it was her own devil
+came to them.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Doll Bilby, I have asked several the meaning of the
+ manifestation of evil, so recent among us. Mr. Kleaver and Mr. Mather
+ have both explained it to the satisfaction of many—is it to your
+ satisfaction?
+
+ _Doll Bilby_: I am an ignorant woman. I cannot explain.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Now you are to talk freely, deny the truth of the
+ statements which you have heard made, explain and elucidate for us—or,
+ if you wish, you may confess.
+
+She was silent.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: At least you can concur with the judgement of those
+ wiser than yourself. At least say this, Was it or was it not a devil
+ who tied the children’s tongues for them?
+
+ _Doll Bilby_: That I do know—it was not.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: How do you know? No one else can claim to be so wise.
+
+ _Doll Bilby_: If it were a demon, I would have seen him.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: You have, then, so nice a sight you can see devils?
+
+ _Mr. Zelley_: May I speak?
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Speak.
+
+ _Mr. Zelley_: If this young woman could command a devil to serve her,
+ would he then be so unmindful of her safety as to come into this court
+ and work tricks so likely to hurt her cause?
+
+ _Mr. Mather_: Cannot God as well as this wretched girl or Satan
+ command devils? Has it not been proved often and often that it
+ sometimes pleases Him to suffer them to do such things in this
+ world as shall stop the mouths of gainsayers and exhort a Christian
+ confession from those who will believe only the most obvious of His
+ truths?
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Bilby, give us your thoughts on the matter. These
+ Divines have spoken wisely.
+
+ _Doll Bilby_: I think it was perhaps an angel—come to do me a mischief.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Do angels come to do mischief to good and baptized
+ women?
+
+The defendant saw she was in difficulty. She twisted her hands in the
+folds of her gown. Then were the children afflicted.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Bilby, if these are indeed your tricks, keep them for
+ more seemly time. Constable, seize her hands. And if, as you suggest,
+ these manifestations are the actions of angels, I pray God to spare us
+ His angels until the Court is adjourned.
+
+A woman was taken in a fit. She fell down laughing and sobbing, and was
+passed out through a window.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Do you think those who are afflicted suffer voluntarily
+ or involuntarily?
+
+ _Doll Bilby_: I cannot tell.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: That is strange; every one may judge for himself.
+
+ _Doll Bilby_: I must be silent.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: You have heard this morning two learned medici explain
+ in what way witchcraft is like to resemble natural ailment, and in
+ what ways it differs. Keep this counsel in your mind, and tell me what
+ you would say of the illness of these children.
+
+ _Doll Bilby_: It would seem they suffer from witchcraft.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: So it would seem to many here. And where there is a
+ witchcraft there must be a witch.
+
+ _Doll Bilby_: Yes.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Where is that witch?
+
+ _Doll Bilby_: God knows I do not know. God knows I never hurt a child.
+ I know of no witch that would afflict these children.
+
+Captain Buzzey stood up. He said that when he and his men came to
+arrest this woman, now standing trial for witchcraft, he and his men
+heard her deny clearly the afflicting of the Thumb twins, and yet she
+had said—most meaningly—‘’Tis the work of _another witch_.’
+
+ _Judge Bride_: You shall explain this for us, Bilby.
+
+ _Doll Bilby_: How shall I explain?
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Confess now, as you did then, that you are a witch.
+
+She was silent.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Confess now, and your life shall be spared.
+
+She was silent.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Confess now and turn against these other witches—for it
+ is possible that many are about—and I swear to you your life will be
+ spared.
+
+She was silent.
+
+ _Judge Lollimour_: Will the prisoner at the bar recite the Lord’s
+ Prayer?
+
+Doll began readily enough. As she spoke the Holy Words, Mr. Zelley
+covered his face in his hands, and made them with his lips as though
+he would help her. She went on without chance or mishap till she came
+to the last sentence, which begins, ‘Lead us not into temptation.’ She
+got no further. Mr. Zelley clenched his hands until his knuckles went
+white. He turned up his eyes to God. Then quickly she began and said,
+to the horror and consternation of all, ‘Ever for, glory the and, power
+the, kingdom the, is thine for, evil from us deliver, but temptation
+into not us lead—Amen.’ She did not know what she had done. She looked
+about with assurance. There was an incessant and horrid silence in the
+court. The Judges looked to each other. Clergyman looked to clergyman,
+then turned eyes to God. So was she utterly undone, but the Court was
+not yet satisfied.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: You have responded to my colleague’s request to the
+ satisfaction of all, but there are some small matters yet to clear.
+ Be of good heart, soon we will let you go. I see you are pale and
+ distrait. Constable, see to it she does not fall from the table. What
+ did you mean when you said the bewitchment of the Thumb twins was ‘the
+ work of another witch’?
+
+ _Doll Bilby_: Sir, how can I explain?
+
+ _Judge Bride_: There is nothing you cannot either confess to, or
+ explain.
+
+ _Doll Bilby_: Sir, I am confused and amazed.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Answer but a few minutes with frankness, and you shall
+ go to your own cell—we are not your enemies—open your heart to us.
+
+She was mute.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Be stubborn, and you shall stand there all night—yes,
+ and the next day. Come, have you ever seen a devil?
+
+She nodded her head.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Ah, then you have seen a devil. Do not feel ashamed of
+ that. Did not Christ Himself see Satan? Was not Luther often tormented
+ by his presence? Some of the best of men have been the most foully
+ pursued. Feel no shame, Doll Bilby. Speak out freely. When was it
+ first?
+
+ _Doll Bilby_: I was a child in Brittany; my mother took me to see him
+ in a great wood.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: An instructive and remarkable experience—and have you
+ seen him since?
+
+ _Doll Bilby_: Last spring I saw him—he came to me again.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: In proper human form?
+
+ _Doll Bilby_: He came to me by night. Yes, he came in form of proper
+ man. He wore seaman’s clothes and with him was an imp—a black-faced
+ imp with a long ringed tail. He wore this imp upon his bosom.
+
+There was a commotion at the back of the hall.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: When did he come last spring to you?
+
+ _Doll Bilby_: The last night in May—the night the Thumbs’ barn burned.
+ Oh, sir, I am sick, let me go to my cell.
+
+Captain Buzzey held her up.
+
+ _A high, wild voice from the midst of the confusion_: I will speak,
+ sirs, you shall hear me.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Who cries out?
+
+ _Voice_: I am Jonet Greene, the tinker’s wife. There are things I
+ know....
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Stand back, all, from the woman. Dame Greene, deliver
+ yourself of these things.
+
+The crowd drew back. Goody Greene, an old woman and of great dignity,
+was revealed to the Judges. Mr. Kleaver whispered to the Judges that
+she was an evil woman.
+
+ _Goody Greene_: This girl never saw a devil. She saw my own son
+ Shadrach. He was wanted for piracy—Heaven help me, I hid him by day,
+ but he prowled by night. He had a monkey, he wore seaman’s clothes. He
+ saw in my house the girl and lusted after her. I speak....
+
+ _A man from back_: Her husband says she lies—she never had no son.
+
+ _Goody Greene_: Believe me, for Christ’s dear sake, believe me. I had
+ a son and I hid him ... but they found him just the same ... God found
+ out his sin. They hanged him; he was called the Bloody Shad.
+
+ _The man_: The woman’s husband, sir, says she never had no son. Time
+ has broken her memory.
+
+ _Goody Greene_: Husband, you are afraid. You coward, who will not
+ confess to the son of your own loins, lest you come to shame—now is
+ Doll indeed undone....
+
+ _Judge Lollimour_: The woman is lunatic. See how she rolls her eyes.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Could you have had a son of which your husband knew
+ nothing—why did you never speak of him to your neighbours? How can we
+ believe your fables? You are lunatic.
+
+ _Goody Greene_: God help me! God help me.... May God help Doll!
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Constable, throw out this ancient—let her learn to be
+ a sager hag—and her husband after her.
+
+A confusion and clamour of tongues rose from all parts of the
+courtroom. Some wished to say what they knew of the Greenes; others
+had stories to tell of lunacy, devils, etc. And there was laughing and
+crying among women, and children wailed and would be taken home. Judge
+Bride stood up in a noble wrath.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Clear the court! Clear the court! What, shall Justice
+ find her house in Bedlam? Constables, pick up and carry out—if they
+ are too weak to walk—the Thumb twins, and you, madame, who are their
+ mother, go with them. Every one shall now be turned out into the snow
+ except those who are the witnesses and proper officers of the law, and
+ the six that I shall name. Mr. Increase Mather, Mr. Seth Dinsmore,
+ Dr. Zerubbabel Endicott, Mr. Zacharias Zelley, Mr. John Wilson, and
+ you, sir, also, Colonel Place Peabody. Gentlemen, the case shall be
+ continued _in camera_. I beg of you few, however, to stay to the end.
+
+
+3
+
+ _From Sundown to black Night the battle continues. The Witch is thrown
+ to confusion. Justitia triumphans. Deus regnat._
+
+Now was the courtroom, empty and vast, silent as the grave. Only twenty
+remained in the room where a minute before had been many hundreds.
+The day had worn to sunset and the room was dark. Flares were lighted
+and candles were set where there was need. But the light of flare and
+candle made the far reaches of the room and the dark corners behind the
+scaffold even blacker. Such humanity as was present were huddled about
+the platform and the great chairs of the Judges. By candlelight Judge
+Bride glanced over the notes that he had taken, and by candlelight
+Titus Thumb looked to the witch upon the table. She stood there ghastly
+pale and like to swoon. Her eyes were round and struck terror to all.
+She did not look again to Titus, only to Judge Bride, whom she in her
+simplicity thought to be her friend.
+
+Judge Bride bade the sheriff fetch a chair—a good chair with a back to
+it, for he said he saw that the accused was tired past human strength.
+Captain Buzzey got a chair. It was a great chair similar to those
+in which the Judges sat. Judge Bride had it placed on the platform
+between himself and Judge Lollimour. The three sat thus for a moment in
+silence, a judge, and next a witch, and then a judge. So they sat in
+great chairs and upon crimson damask cushions. The witch’s feet could
+not reach the floor. Judge Bride gave her wine to drink from the silver
+goblet set out for his own use. She drank the wine and was grateful to
+him.
+
+Little by little—tenderly—he questioned her. And little by little she
+told him all. Of the Thumb twins he asked no word, he asked her only
+of her own self, and of that demon who had but so recently gone from
+her. She told in so low a voice those but a few yards away could not
+hear, and Mr. Mather several times cried out, ‘Louder—an it please the
+wench.’ She told of her father and mother in Brittany, and the night
+that Mr. Bilby died. She told of the long winter, and the expectations
+of the spring and the fulfilment of these expectations—for the
+messenger had come, a most vigorous and comely fiend. Sometimes she
+reddened and turned away as might a modest Christian woman. Sometimes
+she sighed, and once or twice she smiled a small and secret smile. And
+three times she said she loved and did not fear the demon, and that he
+had been kind and pitiful to her.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: You say this devil was your lover and that he conducted
+ himself as has many a shameless mortal man to many a woman, for
+ he loved you, and when he had stayed himself of you he went away,
+ whistling, we may presume, and shrugging his shoulders—ah, gentlemen,
+ how shocking is the conduct of the male, be he demon or tomcat! And
+ now, Doll Bilby, we are almost to the end. Do not fear to weary us
+ with the length and detail of your history. Come, tell us more. The
+ ears of Justice must ever be long and patient ears.
+
+She told more. There was nothing left untold, and where she would have
+turned aside, Judge Bride encouraged and helped her. Mr. Zelley moaned
+and cried out, and his head was in his hands. Titus went ghostly white
+and, trembling, staggered from the room.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: But did not your conscience hurt? Did you not know that
+ you lived with this strange lover of yours in sin?
+
+ _Doll Bilby_: I begged him to marry me. So he did.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: A most virtuous and homely fiend. And did you find
+ clerk or magistrate to register your vows?
+
+ _Doll Bilby_: No, we married ourselves.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Ah, the Governor of Connecticut but recently gave you
+ example.
+
+And he pointed out to Judge Lollimour with much leisure how evil is bad
+example in high places. He questioned Doll further. She told him all
+there was to tell about the marriage, and it humiliated her to tell
+that she had accepted this fiend before marriage.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Come, come, is it then so sorry a sin for two young
+ people to be too hot and previous in their love? Surely honest
+ marriage may be considered salve to such misconduct.
+
+He glanced through his notes. There was not a sound in the room, not
+the scamper of a mouse, not the taking of breath, no sound except the
+fiery rustle of the flares and the crackle of the paper.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Doll Bilby, I notice that the children spoke often of a
+ pretty babe—which they called yours. Now to what do they refer?
+
+ _Doll Bilby_: Sir, I cannot be sure.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: You may guess, perhaps?
+
+ _Doll Bilby_: Oh, sir, sir....
+
+Her eyes sought Mr. Zelley, but his face was in his hands.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Speak freely.
+
+ _Doll Bilby_: I think it was to my own babe they referred.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: And where now is this child?
+
+ _Doll Bilby_: It is not yet born.
+
+ _Judge Bride_: And to whom the honour of its paternity?
+
+ _Doll Bilby_: Who else would it be but the fiend who came to comfort
+ me?
+
+ _Judge Bride_: Do not hang your head, young Bilby, for to conceive is
+ natural to woman. Rather should you redden and look down if after such
+ expenditure of infernal ardour you had proved sterile. Conception is
+ the glory of woman.
+
+He stood up and dismissed the hearing. Then Captain Buzzey in a great
+sweat of fear took the witch back to her cell, and all others went
+home. That night the Boston Judges lay at the Black Moon. The barmaid
+heard Judge Lollimour say to Judge Bride, as these two sat by the
+hearth and drank their sack-posset: ‘Sir, this hearing is done as
+quickly as ever you prophesied. We will be back to Boston on the third
+day. I warrant the finding is more than any expected. There is enough
+against the wench to hang her three times over—but that is yet for the
+magistrates of the Superior Court to decide. We, at least, shall hold
+her without bail or bond.’ Then he said in wonder, ‘To think that God
+has vouchsafed to our eyes the sight of a woman who has embraced a
+demon....’ The Judges whispered. The barmaid would not repeat what they
+said.
+
+These learned men called for ink-horn, sand, and pens. By ten o’clock
+they had written thus:
+
+ Doll Bilby of Cowan Corners, (Essex County,) being this day brought
+ before us upon suspicion of witchcraft and upon the specific charge of
+ afflicting Labour and Sorrow Thumb, twin daughters of Deacon Ephraim
+ Thumb, we heard the aforesaid, and seeing what we did see, together
+ with hearing charges of the persons then present, we committed this
+ same Doll Bilby (she denying the matter of fact, yet confessing
+ herself a witch, also confessing having had carnal knowledge of a
+ fiend, also to being at this time pregnant by him, also to being
+ married to him by the ceremony of Max Pax Fax) unto their majesties’
+ jail at Salem, as per mittimus then given out in order to further
+ examination.
+
+  ADAM BRIDE      }
+  RALPH LOLLIMOUR } Magistrates
+
+By eleven they slept upon their beds.
+
+
+4
+
+_Doll having cooked her goose, now must sit to eat it. And one who
+later proves a warlock comes to sit by her side._
+
+Next day Doll rose early, thinking she would be called again before
+the magistrates. Judge Bride had talked kindly to her and at the end
+nothing had been said about the Thumb twins. She had not guessed his
+mind to be made up against her.
+
+She rose early, an hour before dawn, and by a rushlight prepared
+herself for court. The jailor, John Ackes, could watch her through
+a chink in the masonry. He saw her put on hat and cloak and set out
+wooden pattens. He ran in fear to the Black Moon where Mr. Zelley
+that night lay, and begged him—if he dared—to come a-running, for
+he believed the witch was about to fly though the roof. She was all
+dressed and set to go.
+
+Mr. Zelley went to the dungeon and found her waiting to be taken before
+the magistrates. He sat upon her straw bed by her side, and he took her
+hands. He said, ‘Poor child, lay by your hat and riding-gear, for ’tis
+all done.’
+
+Done? She had thought they were but started. The matter of the Thumb
+twins was not yet proven—Judge Bride himself had confessed as much.
+Mr. Zelley said that now there was another warrant for her and another
+_mittimus_. But Mr. Zelley must have heard Judge Bride say there was no
+offence in having seen a devil—had not even Christ talked with Lucifer?
+And obviously the magistrates had approved her marriage and had even
+forgiven her that she had been too pliant to her lover’s desires. How,
+therefore, could the Court be done with her—unless they were about to
+set her free?
+
+‘You are to be held for a jury—a jury, my poor Doll, of your own angry
+neighbours, and for the February sessions of the Superior Court of
+Judicature.’ He explained that Judges Bride and Lollimour could only
+examine her and hold her over to a higher court. It is true they could
+have dismissed her as innocent—if it had pleased them; but they could
+not give sentence of death.... He wished her to think of death and it
+might be to prepare her mind and more especially her soul (if she had a
+soul) against this likely contingence.
+
+‘Death?’ she said. ‘How can I die? God, God, oh, God! I do not want
+to die.’ At the first moment she was afraid of death like any other
+wicked woman. She closed her eyes and leaned back against the masonry
+of her cell, remaining a long, long time silent, but her lips moved.
+Mr. Zelley sat beside her. His head was in his hands. When next she
+spoke she had conquered fear of death. She spoke bravely in a clear,
+strong voice. Then she told Mr. Zelley more concerning the fiend whom
+Hell had sent to love her. She said that he had promised her that,
+when she should come to die, he would stand at her bed’s head. After
+death he would be with her and she with him forever and ever. She said
+boldly that she did not fear to die. But she flung herself to her knees
+and laid her tousled head in Mr. Zelley’s lap and then confessed that
+she had a most hideous horror of gallows and halter. As he could he
+comforted her. Tears streamed from his eyes, though hers were always
+dry. He knelt and seemed to pray to God.
+
+John Ackes at his chink saw him pray and heard his prayer. He said it
+was an unseemly prayer—not like those one hears in church—not like the
+majestic and awful utterances of Mr. Increase Mather. Zelley talked
+to God as you might talk to a friend. So many thought that it was not
+to the true God that he prayed, but to some demon whom he privately
+worshipped. When his own day came to hang, this thing was remembered
+against him.
+
+The witch-woman crouched upon her straw bed the while he prayed. She
+had put her hat on her head again and was wrapped in her scarlet
+riding-coat. She stared out of round cat’s eyes at the man who prayed
+for her.
+
+
+5
+
+_Abortive attempts to save a_ SOUL _and more infernal manifestations of
+the Demon Lover_.
+
+Now was her physical body in sore plight, for she was bound in irons
+heavier than a strong man might bear. The jailors feared her, and,
+although an eye was forever at the chink, they did as little for her
+as might be. The Court permitted only these to go to her: her jailors;
+the two ministers of God, labouring in Salem, and Mr. Increase Mather
+whose mind was at that time big with a demonology. He wished to study
+and examine her. It was three weeks before Mr. Zelley got a permit from
+Boston to visit her. He guessed by the cold, tardy manner in which his
+request was answered that he himself had fallen into ill-repute. This
+was true. His people thought him a warlock and feared and hated him.
+
+When twenty years later, in the days of the great witch-hunting and
+hanging in Salem, Mr. Zelley himself came to be tried, John Ackes was
+commanded to tell the Court (if he could remember) of what it was the
+witch and the warlock had talked through those long hours they had sat
+side by side upon the witch’s straw bed. He testified (swearing to his
+truth upon the Bible) that they talked but little. Zelley’s head was
+forever in his hands. He did not see the witch-woman’s face—nor her
+eyes. He did not see how constantly she gaped at empty corners; how she
+smiled and nodded into space; how sometimes she would close her eyes
+and raise her mouth for the empty air to kiss. All this she did behind
+Mr. Zelley’s back. They asked John Ackes if Mr. Zelley made no attempt
+to save the woman’s soul. No, he only sat. Sometimes he talked a little
+to Doll and sometimes he talked to one whom he designated as ‘god.’ But
+he did not really pray at all—not as Mr. Mather prayed—him you could
+hear through stone walls and up and down the street. The crowd would
+gather outside the jail when Mr. Mather prayed. He was a most fearful
+and righteous suppliant before the Throne of God. After his prayers
+the wonder was no lightning came to destroy the young witch where she
+sat—grimacing and leering at spectres. When one considered Mr. Mather,
+one could not say that Zelley prayed at all.
+
+However, it was true that Zelley would sometimes seem to beg Doll Bilby
+to turn to God before it was too late. She would always explain to him
+that she wanted no other God than Lucifer and no Heaven, for where her
+parents were and her foster father and her dear husband—there with them
+was her Paradise, not in Heaven with the cold angels singing psalms
+forever to an angry and awful God; not in Heaven where doubtless
+Hannah Bilby would be found and all her cruel neighbours—no, no, a
+thousand times no. Hell was her true home—her Paradise.
+
+Sometimes he would read to her from a stout big book, and John Ackes
+swore he thought it was a Bible, although it was possible that the book
+was a book of magic—perhaps this was even probable. Still the stories
+he read to her from this book sounded to him like Bible stories. What
+would he read to her? He read to her of Mary of Magdala, how she laid
+her head upon our Saviour’s feet and wiped them with her hair. He read
+to her the holy promises of John. It was evident, said John Ackes, that
+Zelley was not for a long time conscious of the fiend which lurked
+forever in the witch’s cell.
+
+Towards the end no one but Mr. Zelley dared go to her dungeon. They
+were all afraid. It was remembered and marked against him that, where
+other and more godly men felt fear, he felt no fear. At last even Mr.
+Zelley knew that he and the witch were never alone. There was another
+and more awful presence about.
+
+Now he would look up quickly from his reading and catch her eyes as
+they sought those of some one or something close behind his own
+shoulder. When their eyes met, she would smile so softly and happily
+he knew that the invisible presence must be that of the one she loved.
+Mr. Zelley confessed that this consciousness of a third and unseen
+party in the cell sadly upset and confused him. He sweated, he could
+not read. One afternoon she gave him such close attention he decided
+that the fiend had left, so he closed his book and asked her abruptly
+if her demon lover had come back again. She was surprised that he asked
+this question. ‘Of course he is back,’ she said. ‘Now he will not leave
+me until the end.’ It was not he, she said, whom the Thumb twins saw
+at the trial, and Doll again wickedly said that perhaps that creature
+had been an angel. ‘My fiend never came near me as I stood all day on
+trial. Now he has sworn to stay with me. If I go to Gallows Hill, he
+will go with me. If I die here first, he will hold my hands.’
+
+Zelley asked her if she could really see this demon. For instance,
+was he at that very moment in the room? Oh, yes. He sat yonder by the
+cupboard. His head, she said, rested upon his bosom. ‘Last night I had
+a fearful fit of terror. I thought I could not face the gallows. He
+held me in his arms and sang to me until sunrise. Now he sleeps.’
+
+‘Is he now in seaman’s clothes and has he the likeness of proper man?’
+(Mr. Zelley whispered. He feared to wake the demon.)
+
+‘No. He has returned in shape of true fiend. For he is horned, naked,
+scaly, black. His feet are cloven. He has vast leathery bat-pinions.
+His tail is long and spiked.’
+
+‘How, then, can you know that this is your own fiend and not another
+one?’
+
+‘By his eyes and by his loving voice. These things have not changed.’
+
+‘How is it he returned to you? In what manner did he make himself
+manifest?’
+
+‘You recall that day after the trial when you came to me and let me
+know beyond a doubt that I must die? All the next day I felt him in
+the cell with me. Then little by little he took visible form. At first
+he was a vapour that seemed to rise between the flags of the dungeon
+floor, and then I could see the shadow of his great and most awful
+form—a transparent shadow through which one could look, even as one
+looks through smoke. But daily he gained more and more in body and he
+now is as hard and sturdy as mortal man. At first seeing horns, tail,
+and so fearsome a scaly black body, I cried out in my disappointment
+and despair. I, in my simplicity, had imagined he would always be to
+me as he had been—shaped, dressed, and coloured like comely, mortal
+man. He seemed monstrous to me—more likely to inspire fear than love.
+At last I could see his eyes and they were unchanged. And his voice
+(for, having gained complete actuality, he could speak) was the same.
+So I knew him as my own husband, and now I love him more in his present
+infernal majesty than I did in seaman’s form. This shape is fairer to
+me.’ (Thus twenty years later Mr. Zelley testified in court as to his
+conversation with Doll Bilby.)
+
+On being pressed, Mr. Zelley confessed still further. He said he
+asked her why it was that no one—not even the jailors—dared go to her
+cell. Did they fear the spectral presence? She was amazed that he had
+heard no gossip. Surely the village must by now be buzzing with the
+tricks her demon had performed. Had he not heard what had befallen her
+peeping jailors? They used (to her unutterable torment and vexation) to
+watch her through a chink in the masonry. But the demon punished them
+by blowing into their eyes. This had given them the pink-eye. Surely
+he must have noticed that her jailors suffered from pink-eye? Now
+that she mentioned it he said he believed he had noticed it. And she
+was to tell him further. Why did the great Mr. Mather come no more?
+She clapped her hands, laughing and purring. Her demon had hated Mr.
+Mather so bitterly, and had so resented his long, loud prayers, that
+he had several times been on the point of strangling him. In his utter
+foolishness the man had dared to read the story of Tobit to her—how
+Sara was beloved of the fiend Asmodeus and how this fiend strangled
+her many husbands upon their marriage beds, but how at the last this
+fine fiend Asmodeus had been driven to farthest Egypt by the stench
+of a burning fish’s liver. This story the wicked witch claimed to be
+utterly false—it made no jot of difference to her that it was found in
+Holy Writ. She said it was a black lie that did much to minimize that
+dignity of Prince Asmodeus—who was a close friend to her own lover. She
+put up her hand and whispered to Mr. Zelley that, although her fiend
+had never told her his own true name, she had reason to suspect that
+he himself was none other than this same Asmodeus, for he was touchy
+beyond all reason for the dignity of the Prince and he had told her at
+some length how dull, tedious, and complaining a woman Sara had been,
+and how gladly her lover had surrendered her in the end to the young
+Jew. The burning fish’s liver had never driven him forth—he went as
+it pleased himself. The stench had almost expelled the bride from her
+bridal chamber, but it had had no effect upon the stalwart demon Prince.
+
+Mr. Mather had insisted on reading this story thrice over to her, and
+on the last reading he had also endeavoured to burn the large liver
+of a cod-fish. Then her husband rushed at the fire. His tail stood up
+rigid in rage; he shook his horns like an angry bull; he rustled his
+vast pinions, and, as he snuffed out the fire that made the stench with
+his two horny hands, Mr. Mather looked up and of a sudden saw him there
+and was close to dying of terror. Doll begged the fiend again to assume
+invisibility and not to strangle the distinguished Divine. So Mr.
+Mather went away and never came again. But surely, surely Mr. Zelley
+had heard this thing spoken of? And how her demon had served the two
+Salem clergymen—the tricks he had put on them—surely these things were
+common gossip? No, of these things he had heard never a word. No one
+gossiped with him—now.
+
+It was then at that moment he first came to know he was under
+suspicion. Doll knew this too. She told him how she had never heard
+that the Thumb twins were bewitched until the very day Captain Buzzey
+rode up and accused her of their bewitchment. She said she pitied Mr.
+Zelley and he said his life grew strange. Every one in all the world
+was far removed, and even God had turned His face away from him. He
+said (foolishly) that all his life he had felt that if he believed in
+witches, demons, etc., he could not believe in God; for that God Whom
+he worshipped would not tolerate such evil things. Yet now had he seen
+the proof that such things were true—and, if true, where, then, was
+that great and good God whom he had long worshipped? ‘My Doll,’ he
+said, ‘you have taken away my reason and my God—now I have nothing. I
+have not even one man I may call “friend.”’
+
+She comforted him, not by words, but by putting her small hands (now
+thin as a bird’s claws) upon his bent head. She kissed his forehead.
+He got up and went away. He did not stay as he should have stayed with
+his flock in Cowan Corners. He slept at the Black Moon, for such was
+the bewitchment that Doll had set upon him he must see her again and
+that early upon the next day.
+
+
+6
+
+_The Labours of a Witch and the Prayers of the Godly._
+
+The year was nine days old and no more. Then was Doll Bilby taken in
+labour and brought prematurely to bed.
+
+The Salem midwife—ancient Nan Hackett—would have none of her, and it
+seemed that, whatever it was she must bear, she should bear alone.
+Nor did she ask for mortal aid. She was content with that phantom
+which stood night and day (as many saw) at her bed’s head. Mr. Zelley
+remembered that Goody Goochey, when first she came to Cowan Corners,
+had served the beginning as well as the end of life—that is, she had
+been a midwife as well as a layer-out of the dead. He went to the woman
+and begged her, in pity’s name and partly commanded her in the name of
+the General Court, to get herself to Salem jail and there give such
+service as might be.
+
+She was afraid. She did not wish to be midwife to a witch and the first
+to welcome a black imp into the world. She drank three piggins of ale
+and took a leather bottle of brandy with her. She set upon her thumbs
+and fingers those iron rings with which she was accustomed to guard
+herself against the ghosts of the dead. She thought, after all, is not
+a live imp of greater danger to a good Christian’s soul than the body
+of a dead church elder? Mr. Zelley went with her to the jail.
+
+The witch at the moment was not in pain. She lay with eyes black as the
+pits of Hell. Her white mouth was open. She roused herself a little and
+made Mr. Zelley a brief speech in which she said that she had, as he
+knew, sought God and spiritual peace, and now, let him look into her
+face and say that she had failed to find either. It was true, said Mr.
+Zelley. Her face was fulfilled of heavenly peace. He left her without a
+word.
+
+Outside he found a conclave of idle men and women who laughed and
+joked coarsely. One big ruddy wench (who had already borne, to the
+embarrassment of the community, three fatherless children) was crying
+out loudly that God knew it was enough for woman to give birth to
+human child, which is round and sleek as a melon. God help the witch
+now in labour with an imp, for it would come into the world with spiked
+tail and horns. Such a thing would be the death of any mortal woman.
+All were afraid. Some believed a clap of thunder would come down from
+Heaven and destroy the woman. Others that a fiend would rise up from
+Hell to succour her. Some said that the witches and warlocks for an
+hundred miles had gathered together and now, mounting broomsticks, were
+about to charge down upon Salem. One said, ‘Have you not heard? Judge
+Bride has suffered an apoplexy. Judge Lollimour is at death’s door.’
+This was not so.
+
+Another said Captain Tom Buzzey’s hands (those hands that had held the
+witch) had withered. They had shrivelled to the size of a child’s. This
+was not so.
+
+All said the witch is in labour. She’s with child by the Devil. God
+will burn her soul in Hell. This was so.
+
+The day wore on. The sun, as sometimes may be in the midst of winter,
+was so warm the snow melted and water dripped from the eaves of the
+jail. It was tender as a day in spring. Planks and rugs were laid in
+the slush, for certain clergymen came to pray and must have dry land to
+kneel upon. They prayed that God recollect the number of good, pious
+Christian people there were at Salem and not destroy all, for they
+feared His wrath might blast the whole village. God made no sign, but
+the water dripped from the eaves and a sweet spring fragrance rose from
+the melting snow.
+
+The multitude gaped and feared. Sometimes they smelt sulphur,
+saltpeter, brimstone, and the stench as of a sloughing serpent. They
+heard the crying of a phantom voice and the swishing of a thousand
+brooms. So they waited through the day expecting every moment to see
+crabbed Goody Goochey hobble out with a black imp upon a blanket to
+show them.
+
+There was no sound from the cell. Not one cry nor moan from the witch,
+not one word from Goochey. The jailors would open the door. It stuck.
+Their keys would not fit it. They could not open the door, and believed
+devils were holding it fast. They dared not peek in the chink because
+of their pink-eye.
+
+By sundown most went home.
+
+
+7
+
+_Mr. Zelley opens a Dungeon Door, and what came of it._
+
+The next day dawned cold and grey over an icy sea, and the gulls and
+terns came in from the harbour crying and lamenting. There was now no
+tenderness in the air, and the water that had but yesterday melted
+under the rays of a genial sun froze to glassy ice. A wind sharp as
+needles came in off the sea and few if any watched the night out on
+their knees beside the dungeon walls. As soon as it was possible to
+see six feet ahead, the multitude again began to assemble, but this
+time they came without laughter or conversation. They were shrouded
+in hoods, shawls, etc., for warmth, and seemed a spectral band. Now
+and then one or another of them would raise a pious voice in prayer,
+lamentation, or thanksgiving, but for the most part they stood bowed
+and mute. All night there had been no sound from the witch’s cell—never
+a sound. Who was there so bold as to enter in to her and bring back a
+report, for John Ackes’s hand shook so he could not manage the key?
+Some said Mr. Zelley would go—he had no normal, wholesome fear of
+witches or demons. Others said, ‘Where does he lie to-night?’ Others,
+‘Go, run and fetch him’; and a boy (it was Widow Hannah’s bonded boy
+Jake Tulley) said the man lay at the Black Moon and that he would run
+and fetch him. This he did.
+
+Mr. Zelley came in a steeple hat and a greatcoat. He spoke to no one.
+No one spoke to him. He entered the jail and took the cell key from
+Ackes, and, after some shaking and effort, he turned the lock and
+pushed hard on the door, which swung in so suddenly he almost fell on
+his knees beside that straw bed where he had sat so many wicked hours
+with the witch-girl. A hundred had crowded down the passage and into
+the doorway after Mr. Zelley. All stopped at the threshold of the cell.
+They stood agape, some filled with curiosity, some with fear, others
+with pious ejaculations and elevated thoughts.
+
+Goody Goochey (who indeed proved to be no woman, but a man) lay in a
+drunken fit in a corner. His face was purple and his throat twisted and
+bruised as though he had been half strangled—which he always averred to
+his dying day was the truth, for he had seen the scaly black demon come
+at him with great hands outstretched to his throat, and that was the
+last he could really remember until certain ones tumbled him out into
+the snow. He was sure, however, that, as he lay thus almost unconscious
+in a corner, a great concourse of spectrals and infernals had filled
+the cell. They had danced, sung, and made much of the witch, praising
+her, encouraging her, etc. Because the man was known to be an impostor
+(he had for many years made all think him a woman) and because of his
+swinish, drunken ways, many did not believe what he said.
+
+All could see that Bilby’s Doll was dead. She lay with her round eyes
+open to the ceiling, and her expression was one of peace and content.
+Whatever she might have borne was dead within her.
+
+
+8
+
+_Without_ HELL _where is_ HEAVEN? _And without a Devil where is_ GOD?
+_Also the last of Doll Bilby and an end to these instructions._
+
+There are court records, affidavits, etc.; there are diaries, letters
+and such; there is the memory of old gaffers and goodies to prove that
+once Doll Bilby flourished. But of physical, inanimate objects nothing
+that was associated with her evil life and awful end now exists. The
+house she lived in mysteriously rotted and fell into the cellar hole.
+The grave they dug her is now lost under a ploughed field (a sterile
+field that yields little). Where the dungeon was now is a brick house,
+a fine big house of red bricks had out from England. No one will live
+there. Yet any gamin, for a copper penny, and any courting couple, for
+wanton pleasure, will show you the very spot in the white birch thicket
+where Doll met her demon lover night after night under the moonlight,
+in that world of witchery which none to-day will ever see. For in
+those days there were sights and wonders that will not come again. In
+those days God was nearer to man than He is to-day, and where God is
+there also must be His Evil Opponent—the Prince of Lies, for show me
+Paradise, and there, around a corner, I will show you Hell.
+
+
+_Finis coronat opus_
+
+[Illustration: Demon and woman laying down]
+
+
+
+
+  Transcriber’s Notes
+
+  pg 12 Changed: (a thing she aways feared)
+             to: (a thing she always feared)
+
+  pg 59 Changed: but here was nothing more to lock
+             to: but there was nothing more to lock
+
+  pg 122 Changed: and how in Hartford
+              to: and now in Hartford
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75212 ***