“You can go home,” he said. “You’ve had your revenge. And what was it for? How many of you were there that she had not helped and healed? Which of you did she ever turn away unhelped, save when the malady was beyond her power, or when one came to her for aid to do an evil thing? Men, women, lads! you’ve repeated the deed of Iscariot this day, for you’ve betrayed innocent blood—you have slain your benefactor and friend. Go home and ask God and the saints to forgive you—if they ever can. How they sit calm above yonder, and stand this world, is more than I can tell.—Poor, harmless, kindly soul! may God comfort thee in His blessed Heaven! And for them that have harried thee, and taken thy life, and have the black brand of murder on their souls, God pardon them as He may!”
The crowd dispersed silently and slowly. Some among them, who had been more thoughtless than malicious, were already beginning to realise that Wigan’s words were true. The sumner, however, marched away whistling a tune. Then Wigan, with his shamefaced helpers, Erenbald and Baderun, and a fourth who had come near them as if he too were sorry for the evil which he had helped to do, inasmuch as he had not stood out to prevent its being done, lifted the frail light corpse, and bore it a little way into the wood. There, in the soft fresh green, they dug a grave, and laid in it the body of Mother Haldane.
“We’d best lay a cross of witch hazel over her,” suggested Baderun. “If things was all right with her, it can’t do no harm; and if so be—”
“Lay what you like,” answered Wigan. “I don’t believe, and never did, that she was a witch. What harm did you ever know her do to any one?”
“Nay, but Mildred o’ th’ Farm, over yonder, told me her black cow stopped giving milk the night Mother Haldane came up to ask for a sup o’ broth, and she denied it.”
“Ay, and Hesela by the Brook—I heard her tell,” added Erenbald, “that her hens, that hadn’t laid them six weeks or more, started laying like mad the day after she’d given the White Witch a gavache. What call you that?”
“I call it stuff and nonsense,” replied Wigan sturdily, “save that both of them got what they deserved: and so being, I reckon that God, who rewards both the righteous and the wicked, had more to do with it than the White Witch.”
“Eh, Wigan, but them’s downright wicked words! You’d never go to say as God Almighty takes note o’ hens, and cows, and such like?”
“Who does, then? How come we to have any eggs and milk?”
“Why, man, that’s natur’.”