Audrey looked at her with glazed, uncomprehending eyes, while the
gnome-like figure appeared to grow smaller, to melt out of the doorway. It
was a minute or more before the wayfarer thus left alone in the hut could
remember that she had been told to bar the door. Then her instinct of
obedience sent her to the threshold. Dusk was falling, and the waters of
the pool lay pale and still beyond the ebony cedars. Through the twilit
landscape moved the crone who had housed her for the night; but she went
not to the north, but southwards toward the river. Presently the dusk
swallowed her up, and Audrey was left with the ragged garden and the
broken fence and the tiny firelit hut. Reentering the room, she fastened
the door, as she had been told to do, and then went back to the hearth.
The fire blazed and the shadows danced; it was far better than last night,
out in the cold, lying upon dead leaves, watching the falling stars. Here
it was warm, warm as June in a walled garden; the fire was red like the
roses ... the roses that had thorns to bring heart's blood.
Audrey fell fast asleep; and while she was asleep and the night was yet
young, the miller whose mill stream had run dry, the keeper of a tippling
house whose custom had dwindled, the ferryman whose child had peaked and
pined and died, came with a score of men to reckon with the witch who had
done the mischief. Finding door and window fast shut, they knocked, softly
at first, then loudly and with threats. One watched the chimney, to see
that the witch did not ride forth that way; and the father of the child
wished to gather brush, pile it against the entrance, and set all afire.
The miller, who was a man of strength, ended the matter by breaking in the
door. They knew that the witch was there, because they had heard her
moving about, and, when the door gave, a cry of affright. When, however,
they had laid hands upon her, and dragged her out under the stars, into
the light of the torches they carried, they found that the witch, who, as
was well known, could slip her shape as a snake slips its skin, was no
longer old and bowed, but straight and young.
"Let me go!" cried Audrey. "How dare you hold me! I never harmed one of
you. I am a poor girl come from a long way off"-"Ay, a long way!" exclaimed the ferryman. "More leagues, I'll warrant,
than there are miles in Virginia! We'll see if ye can swim home, ye
witch!"
"I'm no witch!" cried the girl again. "I never harmed you. Let me go!"