Some weeks after the woman left his house she returned to it one evening alone, just after dark. Before she entered, himself, his wife, and the hired man had been terrified by a crowd of dark faces piled, as it seemed, against the window and all peering in with eyes wild and bright as fiery stars. They had seen feathers wave, and red garments gleam through the glass, but tumultuously and half lost in shadows. Before any one could move to search this strange appearance more thoroughly, the faces disappeared, and did not come back.
Directly after this, one of the carpenters at work on the ship came in, and being questioned declared that he had seen nothing unusual about the house, though his path led him almost around it. While he was saying this Barbara Stafford came in, with her hood thrown back, her garments disturbed and covered with dust. She besought them almost with tears to hasten the repairs going on in the nearly wrecked vessel, and left a purse of gold in his hands to be used to speed the work. Then the woman went away in haste, as she had entered the house.
"Did they follow her to see where she went?"
"Not exactly; but they gathered around the window and watched her as she walked towards the woods. As they stood there, she rode forth out of the shadows on a white horse, and with her came two dark figures; no doubt the fiends who attended her. Scarcely were they swallowed up by the darkness, when all the woods swarmed visibly with dusky figures. He saw them moving under the trees and sweep in a slender column through a small opening into the thick of the forest again, where the weird pageant disappeared, following the prisoner."
In the morning after these strange doings, Brown had gone to his barn, where some boxes had been stored for a passenger who came over in the ship, and which he was to call for. These boxes were remarkably heavy. Of course he did not know any thing of their contents; but he was a powerful man and could not lift one of them an inch from the floor. But he found the corner where they stood empty. Every box was gone, and nothing but some trusses of loose hay remained. Astonished at this, he had searched the ground for wagon tracks, or some other sign of the way in which the boxes had been carried off; but nothing was there; not a wheel track or hoof print. Still the earth was trampled down, but not with human beings, barefooted or with honestly made shoes on their feet.
This was all Jason Brown had to say, except that he had felt the strange influence, described by so many, when the woman addressed him. In spite of himself he was always constrained to lift his hat when she went by. Indeed, so far had this feeling prevailed, that he had more than once put the quid of tobacco back into his pocket when it was almost to his mouth, because she happened to be looking that way; and would hide his cup of grog behind him if she chanced to be present when the rations of gin or rum were dealt out to the men. Jason Brown could not account for these things. He had never felt afraid or awkward in the presence of womankind before. If it was witchcraft—well, he couldn't say that the sin was altogether an unpleasant one. He knew nothing more; but his old woman had been with the prisoner a good deal, and might have something to tell.
As Jason Brown stepped heavily down into the crowd, his wife appeared on the stand, prim, cold, and self-possessed, like a statue of wood. She looked toward the prisoner with a cold, quiet glance, and then gave herself up to be questioned. Her story did not vary from that of the other witnesses, save that she threw no feeling into it, but spoke the simple truth without even an implied comment. Yes, she had loved the lady, loved her so well from the very first, that it seemed almost like a sin. But it appeared to her that this affection sprang out of the dreariness left at her hearth after the two children died. It was very pleasant to sit at her spinning-wheel and see the sweet, mournful look on that face. Goody Brown could not help but think that the poor lady had lost something that she loved, and felt lonesome over it, for sometimes she would sit minutes together looking out on the sea till tears filled her eyes and blinded them. It was these tears that went to her heart. Others might have been bewitched by her smiles and her sweet voice, but she always thought of her children when the lady fell to crying, and longed to kneel down at her feet, sorrowful like herself, and pray God to help them both.
Had the witness seen nothing else that was strange in the prisoner?
Yes; one thing did happen which she had never mentioned to any human being except her husband. One day when Barbara Stafford was taking some things out of a trunk, Goody Brown went into her room suddenly, when the sunshine was streaming in at the window, and saw what seemed to her a wreath of living fire on the bed; a pair of handcuffs blazed in the same light, and a chain, half gold, half flame, rippled across the pillow. The prisoner started when she opened the door, and made an attempt to fling a purple silk mantle, that she had just taken from the trunk, over these things, but seeing that it was too late she dropped the garment and, pale with fright, asked what brought the housewife there, in a voice that was almost cross.
The witness looked in wonder at these strange objects, and asked if they would not set the bed on fire; at which the lady smiled, answering: "No, they were only bright stones playing with the sunshine, but cold and hard as rocks."