The opposing pairs stood and eyed each other. The newcomers were two lank and unhealthy-looking, plainly dressed, town-appearing young men.
“Fie!” said one. “We also search, but not for love of lucre and silver pounds in purses! We would serve God by stamping his foes into dust!”
“Which way have you looked?”
The more garrulous of the two swept his arm around. “Unless the Prince of the Power of the Air hath held them invisible to the eyes of the Elect, they are not in that direction nor in that! My companion, Only Truth Turner, and I were about to seek in the quarter to which I see you are addressed. Let us, then, seek for a while in company. And what, friends, may be your names?”
“I am Relative Truth Allen, otherwise known as Giles Allen, and this is my brother, Be-ye-kind-to-one-Another.—Four together, is it not so? Three fierce, foreign-looking men, and a short, dark woman.”
“We didn’t,” said Only Truth, “hear them described. But there will assuredly be some devil’s mark whereby to know them.”
They were now moving together over the heath. Each of the four had a stout stick, broken at some time in their several journeyings. With theirs the two townsmen now and again beat some clump of furze or thorn. Once a hare rushed forth and away, and once a lark spread its wings and soaring vanished into the blue. “Do you think,” said the speaker, whose name was Wrath Diverted, “do you think that that hare and bird might have been—? I understand that in the trial the Hawthorn witches all avowed that they became bird or beast at will.”
Aderhold followed the lark with his eyes. “I have seen human beings who reminded me of bird or beast, and I have seen bird and beast who reminded me of human beings. If that one up yonder is a witch, she hath strength of wing!”
The lark disappeared; the hare came not back. “Even so,” said Only Truth, “there would be two left. But I hold that those were natural creatures.”