There was the witch at last. A poor trembling girl, scarce out of her teens, with beautiful, delicate features, and an abundance of golden hair falling round her shoulders; her mysterious veil—a bit of showy tinsel—lying in a heap on the floor. Nothing supernatural or devilish about her, surely. Quaint, perhaps, because of that singular beauty of face and skin which seemed so ill-assorted with the sordidness of her surroundings. One of Nature's curious freaks, this kitchen wench with a head which would have graced a duchess, her interesting personality merely the prey of a common charlatan, who used her for vulgar, senseless trickery.
For the moment her beauty was distorted through the dawning of an awful terror. To a sane man she would only have seemed a wretched, miserable, frightened woman. But not so to the ale-sodden, overheated minds of these excited creatures, blinded by an almost maniacal fear.
To them she looked supernaturally tall, supernaturally weird, with great glowing eyes and tongues of flame illumining her person.
"The witch!" they shouted, "the witch! the witch!"
"What do you want with me?" murmured the poor girl.
Egged on by their passions they smothered their terror. They seized her violently by the wrists and dragged her out of her lair and on to the platform, where the rest of the crowd were pressing.
A shout of exultation, of hellish triumph, greeted the appearance of the wretched woman. Not a spark of pity was aroused by her helplessness, her obvious, abject terror.
"The witch! the witch! death to the witch!"
They seemed to be fanning their own passions, adding fuel to the flames of their insensate wrath.
There was the source of all the evil which might have befallen the peaceful valley of the Thames! the creature with the evil eye, the dispenser of misery and death!