Uncle Joe's Stories

by Baron Edward Hugessen Knatchbull-Hugessen Brabourne

As soon as Firminger saw the line which the crones took, he turned to Gower and said in a hasty tone, "Come on, mate, this must be seen to at once. Let us join the chaps who are gone to the old cottage as fast as we can, and tell them what we have seen, and all that has happened."

John Gower was too wise a man to hesitate. Had he done so, he knew well enough that he would be suspected of having knowingly harboured the crones, and of being in league with them, a suspicion which would have ruined him for ever in his native parish, and probably driven him from the county.

So he bade Mary mind the house, and keep Jane and Billy at home, and then he set off at best pace with Firminger down the road in the direction of the cottage of the crones. They very soon reached it, and found it surrounded by a number of people, who were engaged in demolishing the premises altogether. They had not found much, probably because there was not much to find; and the owners of the place, as we know, had taken themselves off before the arrival of their unwelcome visitors. But they broke everything they could find, tore down the thatched roof to search for magic charms, none of which they found, but only a number of mice, and a great deal of dust. They pulled to pieces the wooden part of the cottage, and knocked down a great part of the stone corner, counting everything as fair game, as witches' property, and striving their utmost to destroy as much as they possibly could.

There were more than a couple of hundred people, all told, Farmer Barrett believed, and he gave me a great many names, but I forget most of them. There was Bully Robus, of the "Farriers' Arms," I know, and little Dick Broadfoot, the tailor, of Mersham Street, and Bill Parsons, all the way from Warehorne Green. There were Gowers, and Farrances, Sillibournes and Swaflers, Swinerds and Finns—in short, not a family in that or any of the other parishes which was not represented, and they all seemed to vie with each other, which should do the most mischief, and be foremost in pulling down and destroying that evil place.

It was several minutes before James Firminger and John Gower could command the attention of people so eagerly occupied about their business as these witch-seekers, and it would have been still longer, but for the position and character of Firminger, and his known hatred of all that pertained to witchcraft. He presently succeeded in making them listen to the wonders he had to relate, and when they knew for certain what had happened and the direction which the crones had taken, the whole current of their thoughts was turned into one eager desire to follow, and, if possible, to make an end of the inmates of that awful cottage as well as of the abode itself.

They lost no time, therefore, in finishing the work on which they were then engaged, and immediately afterwards the whole party swarmed up the road in the direction of Aldington Knoll, keeping up each other's courage by many brave words, and shouting uncomplimentary epithets with regard to the three crones. So they pushed on until they came to the spot where four roads met; one, that which our party had traversed in walking from the cottage, another bearing back to Bilsington and Ruckinge, a third to Newchurch and the Marsh, and the fourth to Aldington Knoll.

Down this last road the people turned, and then, immediately before them they had the mass of wood upon the side of the hill, which then, as now, encompassed the knoll itself upon the north, west, and south, the ground to the east being somewhat less woody. The knoll—apparently a grass hill, only that the grass being a good deal worn away, showed the bare rock at several places—peered over the woods, and the road to it lay right through the latter for some distance, until by turning into a gate upon your right hand, you entered the field out of which the knoll rose, and from the higher points of which were magnificent views over the Marsh and all the country east, west, and south, the hills behind shutting out the view to the north.

The people were now some three-quarters of a mile from this gate, and, if the truth could be known, I have no doubt whatever that some of them would very gladly have been a great deal further off.

The power of the crones themselves was so well known, and the reputation of Aldington Knoll was so bad, that no one felt sure that some terrible misfortune might not result from braving the one and attacking the other.

They had all heard strange tales of people bewitched, changed into animals, losing their senses, and all kinds of other disagreeable things, and of course such tales would recur to them at such a moment. But there were brave hearts—then as now—among the men of Kent, and although fears and doubts may have been there, they did not operate so as to turn any man back from the work he had undertaken. The people moved down the road towards Aldington, and reached the point at which the woods began. At that moment a loud clap of thunder pealed through the air, and vivid lightning flashed across the sky.