Ellinor had grown grave again.
“Even doctors are not infallible,” said she reproachfully. “Is poor father the minister of evil because he may have made a mistake?”
“Ah, child, that’s just it! Brother Simon is not a doctor, he is—I don’t know what he is. He tries his herbs and plants upon the village folk. They flock to him and swallow his drugs because he bribes them, my love, by playing on their heathen superstitions about spells and fairies and bogles and what not. They believe themselves cured because they believe him to be in league with the powers of darkness—a warlock, Ellinor! Bred in the bone, alas! Horatio may joke about it, but so long as I have life I will combat that back-sliding influence. God knows, it is ill and hard work. I am as the voice of one crying in the wilderness to the locusts and wild honey, but I’ll not lift my finger from the plough now!”
She rose. “Come child,” she commanded; and followed by Ellinor, led the way downstairs and through long passages to a small dairy room, the window of which gave upon the outer entrance to Master Simon’s laboratory.
Here, with tragic gesture, she halted, and bade her niece look forth.
CHAPTER IX
HEALING HERBS, WARNING TEXTS
Here finds he on the oak rheum-purging Polypode;
And in some open place that to the sun doth lie
He Fumitory gets, and Eyebright for the eye;
The Yarrow wherewithal he stays the wound-made gore,