Mistress Pullen shut the door behind him before she turned to look at her visitor. As soon as she had done so, however, she whisked her baby over to the other side of the room, exclaiming as she did so: “Mother of Heaven! ’Tis Red Farren, the Witch’s brat. Out of the house with him. He can’t stay here bewitching the whole of us.”
The little creature looked up at her, his face puckering. “Not a witch’s brat,” he said, and then putting his grimy little fists to his eyes began to cry bitterly.
Joe Pullen’s fair-haired daughter made a step toward the pitiful little figure, but her father’s hand on her arm restrained her.
“You stay still, Alice, unless you want to wake up one day and find yourself a gray girl or a coney,” he said.
Alice, rather frightened, obeyed, and Tant stood by her, his arm round her, while the two smaller children hung as usual to their mother’s skirts. The whole Pullen family entrenched behind the table stood looking at the weeping little stranger for some seconds before any one spoke again. At last Joe, his natural kindliness overcoming his superstitious fears, stepped round the table and took the child by the hand.
“Why did ye leave Nan’s cabin this time o’ night, lad?” he asked him.
The boy looked fearfully behind him, and Joe, noting the movement, himself turned round in some apprehension. However, nothing untoward being there, Red began to speak through his sobs.
“Pet Salt and Nan is fightin’ horrid,” he said.
Mistress Pullen, her curiosity getting the better of her discretion, came a little nearer.
“Pet Salt?” she said. “How did Pet Salt come to be up there?”