“Aye, aye,” said his mother. “It wasn’t to be seen plain. But she was not by herself.”
“Mother ... the tinker saith that the Scotch witches all have familiars. A man or a woman or sometimes children see such and such an one walking or talking with a tall black man, but when they get close there is only, maybe, a dog, or a cat, or sometimes a frog or a mouse.... But the witch-prickers always find the witch’s mark where the Devil that is her familiar sucks.... And then the witch confesses and tells how the Devil is now tall and black like himself and now shrinks into the small beast, and how by his power she can herself change her shape.”—Will shivered and his eyes glanced fearfully about. “Mother, do you think that there was something evil there?”
His mother looked steadily before her with beady blue eyes. “I don’t know what I think. I think there was somebody or something there that she didn’t want seen or known about—but where it went, or he went.... Don’t you think any more that you might marry her.”
Back in Heron’s cottage Joan sat crouched before the fire. She fed it now constantly with wood so as to make the whole room light. A determination was taking form in her mind. To-morrow she would walk to the town, and climb the castle hill, and ask for Mistress Borrow at the castle. The old housekeeper had called her a pagan, but natheless she had been fond of Joan and Joan of her.... Now to go to the castle, and find her in the cheerful housekeeper’s room and to sit on the floor beside her with head, maybe, in her lap, and free a burdened heart and mind and ask counsel.... She would do it. She would start early—at sunrise. The vigour of her purpose lightened her heart; she rose to her feet, and going to the window, looked out. It was quite dark. The storm had died away, but the sky was filled with torn and hurrying clouds. Now hidden, now silvering cloud and earth, a half-moon hurried too. Joan stood gazing, her face lifted. She thought of her father. At last she raised her arm, closed the casement, and drew across it its linen curtain. From the cupboard she took a candlestick and candle and lighted the latter with a splinter from the hearth. She set it upon the table, and going to the main door turned the large key in the lock. This done, she moved across the kitchen floor to the small door giving upon the back. The key was lost of this, but there was a heavy bar. She had lifted this to slip it into place when the door, pushing against her, opened from without. Carthew reëntered the room.
Joan uttered a cry less of fright than of sudden and great anger. “Beware,” she cried, “that I do not kill you yet! Begone from this place!”
He shook his head. “No. I have watched all away. Who comes, after curfew, of a wet and wild night, to your cottage? No good folk of this region, I am sure. So we’re alone now, Joan, at last!”
He made a movement past her. She saw what he was after, and, lithe and quick herself, she was there first. She had the knife again.... They stood facing each other in the lit room, and Joan spoke.
“Thou hypocrite!” she said; “thou pillar of Hawthorn Church and dependence of God on high and Master Clement! Thou hope of England! Thou searcher-out of iniquity and punisher of wrong-doing! Thou perceiver of high things and the meaning of the world! Thou judge and master in thy own conceit!—Thou plain and beast-like man, who wantest but one thing and knows not love, but lust—”
He caught her in his arms. He was strong, but so was she. They struggled, swaying, their shadows, in firelight and candlelight, towering above them. They breathed hard—they uttered broken words, ejaculations. He was in the grasp of the brute past; she struggled with the energy of despair and hatred. She felt that he gained. Need taught her cunning. She seemed to give in his clasp, then, in the moment when he was deceived, she gathered all her strength, tore her arm free, and struck with the hunting-knife.
The blade entered his side. She drew it out, encrimsoned. They fell apart, Carthew reeling against the wall. The colour ebbed from his face. He felt the bleeding, and thrusting a scarf within his doublet, strove to stanch it. As he leaned there, he kept his eyes upon her. But with the suddenness of the lightning their expression had changed. Wrath and defeat and shame were written in them; desire still, but mixed now with something baleful, with something not unlike hate. The bleeding continued. He felt a singing in his ears and a mist before his eyes.