“I heard a man on Bensington Green, one day last year,” answered Wigan, “talking of such things; and he said that ‘nature’ was only a fool’s word for God. And said I to myself, That’s reason.”
Wigan, being one of that very rare class who think for themselves, was not comprehended by his commissionary tours, had been to this man’s heart as a match to tinder.
“Ay, and he said a deal more too: but it wouldn’t be much use telling you. There—that’s enough. She’ll sleep quiet there. I’ll just go round by her hut, and see if her cat’s there—no need to leave the creature to starve.”
“Eh, Wigan, you’d never take that thing into your house? It’s her familiar, don’t you know? They always be, them black cats—they’re worse than the witches themselves.”
“Specially when they aren’t black, like this? I tell you, she wasn’t a witch; and as to the cat, thou foolish man, it’s nought more nor less than a cat. I’ll take it home to Brichtiva my wife,—she’s not so white-livered as thou.”
“Eh, Wigan, you’ll be sorry one o’ these days!”
“I’m as sorry now as I can be, that I didn’t come up sooner: and I don’t look to be sorry for aught else.”
Wigan went off to the empty hut. But all his coaxing calls of “Puss, puss!” proved vain. Gib was in Ermine’s arms; and Ermine was travelling towards London in a heavy carrier’s waggon, with Stephen on horseback alongside. He gave up the search at last, and went home; charging Brichtiva that if Gib should make a call on her, she was to be careful to extend to him an amount of hospitality which would induce him to remain.
But Gib was never seen in the neighbourhood of Bensington again.
“What wonder?” said Erenbald. “The thing was no cat—it was a foul fiend; and having been released from the service of its earthly mistress, had returned as a matter of course to Satan its master.”