“What are you doing now? Some sort of mischief you’re at, I’ll be bound—you lads are always up to it. Who are you ducking? If it’s that cheat Wrangecoke, I’ll not meddle, only don’t—What, Mother Haldane! Shame on you! Colgrim, Walding, Oselach, Amfrid!—shame on you! What, you, Erenbald, that she healed of that bad leg that laid you up for three months! And you, Baderun, whose child she brought back well-nigh from the grave itself! If you are men, and not demons, come and help me to free her!”
The speaker did not content himself with words. He had waded into the pond, and was feeling his way carefully to the spot where the victim was. For Mother Haldane had not struggled nor even protested, but according to all the unwritten laws relating to witchcraft, had triumphantly exhibited her innocence by sinking to the bottom like a stone. The two spectators whom he had last apostrophised joined him in a shamefaced manner, one muttering something about his desire to avoid suspicion of being in league with a witch, and the other that he “didn’t mean no harm:” and among them, amid the more or less discontented murmurs of those around, they at last dragged out the old woman, untied the cords, and laid her on the grass. The life was yet in her; but it was nearly gone.
“Who’s got a sup of anything to bring her to?” demanded her rescuer. “She’s not gone; she opened her eyes then.”
The time-honoured remedies for drowning were applied. The old woman was set on her head “to let the water run out;” and somebody in the crowd having produced a flask of wine, an endeavour was made to induce her to swallow. Consciousness partially returned, but Haldane did not seem to recognise any one.
“Don’t be feared, Mother,” said the man who had saved her. “I’ll look after you. Don’t you know me? I am Wigan, son of Egglas the charcoal-burner, in the wood.”
Then Mother Haldane spoke,—slowly, with pauses, and as if in a dream.
“Ay, He looked after me. Did all—I asked. He kept them—safe, and—didn’t let it—be long.”
She added two words, which some of her hearers said were—“Good night.” A few thought them rather, “Good Lord!”
Nobody understood her meaning. Only He knew it, who had kept safe the two beings whom Mother Haldane loved, and had not let the hour of her trial and suffering be long.
And then, when the words had died away in one last sobbing sigh, Wigan the son of Egglas stood up from the side of the dead, and spoke to the gazing and now silent multitude.