But he was never less asleep. He looked round the whole cabin; and he listened to every word.
The Devil, as usual, was a bad paymaster; for the witch’s cabin seemed only somewhat more miserable than that of other old women. The floor was mud, the rafters unceiled; the stars shone through the turf roof. The only hint of her trade was a hanging shelf, on which stood five or six little earthen jars, and a few packets of leaves. A parchment, scrawled with characters which the owner herself probably did not understand, hung against the cob wall; and a human skull—probably used only to frighten her patients—dangled from the roof-tree.
But in a corner, stuck against the wall, was something which chilled Hereward’s blood a little. A dried human hand, which he knew must have been stolen off the gallows, gripping in its fleshless fingers a candle, which he knew was made of human fat. That candle, he knew, duly lighted and carried, would enable the witch to walk unseen into any house on earth, yea, through the court of King William himself, while it drowned all men in preternatural slumber.
Hereward was very much frightened. He believed as devoutly in the powers of a witch as did then—and does now, for aught Italian literature, e permissu superiorum, shows—the Pope of Rome.
So he trembled on his rushes, and wished himself safe through that adventure, without being turned into a hare or a wolf.
“I would sooner be a wolf than a hare, of course, killing being more in my trade than being killed; but—who comes here?”
And to the first old crone, who sat winking her bleared eyes, and warming her bleared hands over a little heap of peat in the middle of the cabin, entered another crone, if possible uglier.
“Two of them! If I am not roasted and eaten this night, I am a lucky man.”
And Hereward crossed himself devoutly, and invoked St. Ethelfrida of Ely, St. Guthlac of Crowland, St. Felix of Ramsey,—to whom, he recollected, he had been somewhat remiss; but, above all, St. Peter of Peterborough, whose treasures he had given to the Danes. And he argued stoutly with St. Peter and with his own conscience, that the means sanctify the end, and that he had done it all for the best.
“If thou wilt help me out of this strait, and the rest, blessed Apostle, I will give thee—I will go to Constantinople but what I will win it—a golden table twice as fine as those villains carried off, and one of the Bourne manors—Witham—or Toft—or Mainthorpe—whichever pleases thee best, in full fee; and a—and a—”