"I think that God has punished you; that is His office, not ours; and for the rest—that is my revenge."
JESSY VARCOE
"There goes the witch's darter! Yonder goes the witch's maid! Heave a stone at the likes of her, lads! 'Tidden fitty as such spawn should live!"
Poor Jessy had grown up with taunts like these in her ears, till she had come to be too well used to them to pay much heed. Sometimes a stone would strike her; but she could throw as well as any lad along the coast, and she had proved as much upon the persons of her persecutors many a time and oft. On the whole the children and the lads and girls of Morwinstow had come to think it best to leave Jessy alone, especially since it had been whispered that she was learning the black art from her old grandmother, the Black Witch of the neighbourhood, and could overlook an enemy, or curse him and his goods and smite his crops with blasting and mildew.
So Jessy's life was perforce a lonely one. No kith or kin had she ever known save her old grandmother who lived in the hut upon the rolling downs land, not far from the margin of the cliffs. The old woman went out by night to gather herbs and simples, and these she brewed over the fire by day, muttering her strange incantations the while.
Although she was known as a Black Witch in her own neighbourhood, there were many persons who bought her wares, and found them excellent for sprains, rheumatics, and the like. But nobody visited in a friendly way at the lonely hut save certain wild and fierce-looking men, who always came at night, and were generally laden with packs of merchandise, which they hid away in some secret hiding-place beneath the floor of the cottage.
This much Jessy knew from peeping through the crevices in the floor of the upper room where she slept. She was never permitted to be present when these men came. She was sent to bed up the rickety ladder; and the ladder was invariably removed, so that she could not get down if she would, the bolt in the trapdoor by which she reached her attic being always drawn by the grandmother.
As the child grew to girlhood, she began to understand very well the nature of these visits from seafaring men. They brought smuggled goods to be concealed beneath the witch's hut, well knowing that nobody would willingly run the risk of being cursed or overlooked by the old woman. Moreover, Jessy had reason to believe that the cottage masked an entrance into a very large cave, which was probably a valuable hiding-place; for she always noted the extreme civility with which the rough men treated her grandmother, and how anxious they seemed to please her in the bargains that they made.