"Well, you were more powerful than the prophets with the Witch of Endor," the lady mocked him.
"And, seeing her in that good mind," Stone went on with his tale, "I remembered that she was a very old woman—the oldest of all these parts. So I told her that if she could remember matters of Barnside years agone, since she was in a holier mind, without doubt the young lording would be gracious to her and would grant her a halfpenny a day to live by; so she might live godly, after repenting in a sheet.... So she remembered very clearly that one Hindhorn of Barnsides, Henrice Quinto Rege, had been used, once a year, at Shrovetide, to drag with three bullocks, an oaken log bound with yellow ribbons to the Castle. This was direct and blinding evidence that the right of fire-feu ..."
"Well, you went with the old hag to the chapel," the Lady Margaret said. "I can follow the cant of your mind and spring before it."
"But you may miss many and valuable things," he retorted. "As thus.... Whilst we went up the hill, this old goody, being repentant and weeping, cried out when she heard whither we were bound: 'Alas! Horror! Woe is me!" and other cries. And, when I pressed for a reason, she said that the young lording was a damned soul and that was one of her sins. For she had taught him magic and the meeting-places of warlocks; one of which was that chapel that was an ill-haunted spot, and that was why the lording was there at night. And she was afraid to go near the chapel; for the warlocks would tear her limb from limb. And the familiar and succubus of the Young Lovell was the toad that was, in afore time, the step-mother of the Laidly Worm of Spindleston, that to this day spits upon maidens, so much she hateth the estate of virginity, as often you will have heard."
The lawyer paused and looked long at that lady.
"So that old witch repented?" she said at last, but she gave no sign of her feelings.
"There was never a more beautiful repentance seen," the lawyer said. "So she sighed and groaned and the tears poured off her face to think that she had corrupted that poor lording...." And it had been her repentance, he went on, that had let them see what they had seen, and so made it possible for them to save him.
Now when they came to the chapel, said the lawyer, the young lording, as if he were demented, came rushing out from the door, and the Decies who had watched all night in the porch came out after him, and asked him what he would. But he answered nothing to the Decies and nothing to them, but, with a marvellous fury, like a man rushing in a dream, he ran into the shed where his horse was tethered, and bringing it out, so he galloped away that his long curls of gold flapped in the wind. It was not yet cockcrow, but pretty clear.
Thus those three, standing there and lamenting, saw how, at no great distance, but just under Budle Crags, there was a fire lit, and round it danced wonderful fair women and some old hags and witch-masters, but most fair women.
The lawyer, saying this, gazed hard at the Lady Margaret, but once again the lady said no more than—