“I said naught,” said Cecily, “but that she had a grey and white cat which lay on the hearth or in the sun, and that once I did see it anger itself and grow larger than natural, and its eyes glowed like lanthorns and it went backward, rubbing itself against her skirt—”
“Mother Spuraway’s skirt?”
“Oh, no, sir!” said Cecily. “They say Mother Spuraway’s imp is a green frog that lives in a stream by her door—”
A boy beside the tinker, nudged by the latter, opened his mouth. “Tom and Dick and Jarvis and I were playing in Hawthorn Forest by the burned cot. And a grey and white cat came out of the stones and climbed up in the plum tree and sat and looked at us, and we tried to drive it away, but we couldn’t. Then Master Aderhold came out of the woods and grew as tall as the plum tree and put up his arm, and the cat came and lay upon it. And there was Joan Heron standing in her grey dress, and she was as tall as he was, and he gave her the cat and she laid it along her shoulder, and they went away through the woods without their feet touching the ground—”
The forester’s wife was an impatient dame. By this she had worked her way into the row nearest the justice and the minister, and now she raised her voice. “Your Honour and Maister Clement, I keep bees, and, Your Honour, they’ve not done well for a lang, lang time! They’ve not done well since, out of kindness, I took three hives frae folk that were gaeing visiting and put them with my ain. Those bees I took, I swear were not just bees! Times I thought as much while they harboured with my bees, and would do naught nor let my ain do aught—but I kenned it well when they were gone back to where they came frae! Your Honour and Maister Clement, I ha’ gone by where those hives stand now and seen those bees come flying in with wings a span long and shining, and bodies daubed with gold and making a humming sound like a fiddle-string! And those visiting folk were not auld Mither Spuraway, though I doubt not she be a witch, too!—Those beehives are standing under the thatch of Heron’s cottage!”
At sunset that evening Joan sat on her doorstep, her elbows upon her knees and her brow in her hands. The apple trees were in bloom, the heartsease was in bloom beside the well, red and gold cowslips brushed her shoe. The day had been warm, but the evening fell cool and rich. All day she had not gone from the cottage. She had seen none pass either; the road, the fields, the wood were as quiet as though human life had fled from the earth. She sat with a heart oppressed, the world grown vague and monstrous.... The cottage, the garden, the fruit trees were wrapped in the afterglow. The birds were still; the last bee had come in from the flowers; somewhere in a marshy meadow, the frogs were beginning.
The grey and white cat came and rubbed itself against her. She lifted her head, and saw three or four men on the winding path between the forest road and Heron’s cottage. As they came nearer she recognized first the tinker, but in a moment saw that the one at the head was the Hawthorn constable. Her heart stopped, then began to beat very heavily. As they came through the gate and up the little path she rose from the doorstep.
“Good-day,” said one of them.
“Good-day, neighbours.”