"Now I must go," said the lady, taking the hard hand of Goody Brown in her friendly clasp. "You have been kind to me and I can never forget it. Only help me to these shores, and see if I prove ungrateful."
These words had hardly left the lady's lips when she was outside the door and moving toward the woods in a rapid walk.
These three men and Goody Brown flocked to the window and looked after her as she moved through the light of a moon buried half the time under the fleecy whiteness of drifting clouds. She approached the woods and they saw her engulfed in shadows that seemed to move and sway with the wind. Directly she came forth, riding on a milk-white horse, that stood out from the leaden shadows distinct as marble; for that instant the moon threw off its fleecy burden of clouds, and rode clear and bright across a plain of blue sky. Directly another horse and rider, that looked black as ebony in the distance, came out of the shadows, and then a third; but whether the riders of these black steeds were men or women no one could tell. For a little time the horses kept along the edge of the woods, but at last they plunged into some forest path and were gone.
Still the inmates of the farm-house watched by the window, for there was something weird in the woman's departure which stimulated curiosity. As they looked, the edges of the wood grew alive. Dusky forms moved to and fro, now in the darkness, now in fitful gleams of light; and the forests began to sway and moan as if oppressed by some evil presence, which made all its boughs heave and its foliage quiver. Then a muffled yell broke out from the heart of the woods, and a line of what seemed to be human forms came into an open field that lay close to the forest, and, curving onward like an enormous serpent, crept away through the darkness.
There was little said in the farm-house that night about these mysterious appearances, but a vague superstition took possession of those three men, and they all felt as if the gold they had received might vanish into thin air before morning.
When the day broke, Brown and his hired man went into the barn in order to clear the thrashing-floor of all incumbrances. They found the door shut and every thing in place. But when the man went to the corner where those ponderous boxes had been stored, they were gone. Then the thick hair on Jason Brown's head stood up with terror, and turning from the astonished look of his companion he went into the house.
"Wife, take that purse of gold from your bosom and give it to me."
The woman obeyed him, and drew forth the purse. He snatched it from her hold, left the house, and ran down to the shore. When he reached the verge of the water, great drops stood on his forehead, and he panted for breath. A little way off was a line of breakers dashing up spray from a cluster of hidden rocks. Brown waded knee-deep into the water, swung his arm backward, and hurled the purse into the seething foam.