"Neighbour Gower!" he shouted, as he came in, "why ar't not out with the rest of us after the crones? 'Twill be a grand day for Mersham if we get quit of them. But you've got company, I see—bless us, what a smell of sulphur!"
As he spoke, he turned his eyes on the young woman and her two blind companions, and started as he did so. Firminger never went about without some potent witch-charm upon him, which at once protected him from the malice of such creatures, and enabled him to detect them when disguised, and upon this occasion he had nothing less than a relic of the great Kentish saint, Thomas à Becket, being a small piece of the hair-shirt of that holy man, cut off shortly after his death by one of the monks of Canterbury, who happened to be a Firminger, and religiously preserved in the Firminger family ever afterwards.
Naturally, as Farmer Barrett observed, no witch could stand against that, and Firminger was a lucky man to possess it. It was doubtless in consequence, and by virtue of this relic, that as soon as the good man was well inside the cottage, he not only smelt the sulphur which had not been smelt by the family, but saw what was the real character of John Gower's visitors. He took no second look, but shouted aloud, "The crones! the crones!" and seizing the little case in which was his relic in his hands, displayed it openly before them.
The effect was instantaneous. All beauty disappeared from the face of the young woman, her form changed, her countenance shrivelled, and she stood confessed before the party as Humpy, the youngest of the three Crones of Mersham.
No less sudden and complete was the alteration in her two companions, who recovered their sight at once, but together therewith resumed the unpleasant forms and features of Skinny and Bony, the two other sisters of this disreputable family. There was a visible agitation at the same moment in the baskets which the sisters had carried upon their arms, and which they had deposited on the floor upon taking their seats.
The lids shook, the baskets quivered, and in another instant overturned, when out sprang three enormous black cats upon the floor of the room.
With a yell, which seemed to burst simultaneously from the throats of all the crones and all the cats, they rushed out at the door; flying from the charm which James Firminger kept earnestly shaking before their eyes. Out of the door, over the green space in front of the cottage, into the road, and as far and fast as they could get away from the object of their terror.
John Gower and his children sat stupified with mingled surprise and awe for some seconds; and then, jumping from their seats, they all rushed through the door after Firminger; who, having done so, stood still outside, eagerly gazing after the retreating crones. He knew well enough that, if nought had prevented them, the honest people who were out after the witches, would by this time have attacked and harried their home. Whither, then, would they fly?
If they had quitted their cottage ignorant of the coming of their enemies, and only bent on paying John Gower a visit—doubtless intending to do him some mischief or other; it might be that they would hurry home, and encounter the angry mob of people, in which case there would be wild work one way or the other. If, however, as was more probable (and as was generally believed to be the case when the matter was considered afterwards), the three crones had been well aware of the projected attack upon them, and had purposely left home—hoping that they might lie safely hid in the abode of so honest and quiet a man as Gower until the danger was over, then it became a serious question as to what other refuge they would seek, now that they had been so manfully driven from their intended place of safety. The doubts of the lookers-on, however, were soon solved.
A strange thing happened, which would never have been believed in those days, but that Firminger and Gower both solemnly declared it, and which perhaps actually will not be believed in these days of doubt and want of faith, but which I must nevertheless relate as Farmer Barrett told it to me. As soon as they were well on the other side of the road, each crone jumped upon her cat, and the animals, lightly springing over the hedge into the next field, set off full gallop in an easterly direction—or, in other words, heading as straight as a line to Aldington Knoll, well-known in those good old days as the great fortress of witches. That was their point, no doubt, and it looked very much as if they were going to give up Mersham as a bad job, and betake themselves to other and safer quarters.