“Please your worship, I am ready to make oath that she hath a familiar, always about her in the shape of a brown mouse; for I have seen it crawling about her neck, and playing and feeding in her hand.”
Here there was a mixed utterance of triumph and horror in the crowd, and Sir Oliver himself looked grave.
“What dost thou answer to this, Margery?”
“They say true in that they say I have a tame mouse; and haven’t court ladies their monkeys, and their parrots, and their squirrels, and their white mice,—and why mayn’t an old lone woman have her pet as well as they?” As thus she spoke, she held out her open hand, and a lively brown mouse sat up quietly on the palm seemingly quite tame. There was a slight shudder ran through the veins of all present; and Cuthbert Noble, fearing lest this mode of defence might rather hinder than help her, went up to advise her better.
“A warm blessing on you, Master Noble,—the blessing of one whom you have saved before, and are trying to save again.”
Here Cuthbert stopped her, and observed to Sir Oliver aloud, that this mouse was but such a pet as a shepherd’s boy might play with, and that the old woman, whose ways were odd, had once told him that when she was a child and her little brother died, she had taken to a field mouse which he had petted, and that she had ever since as one died procured another.
The worthy knight was now for discharging Margery; but Farmer Morton insisted that they should hear his carter’s story. Accordingly Jock stepped forward, and smoothing down his hair said,—“Please your worship, I lost my best startups (high shoes) the day before last cattle fair, and precious mad I was; and Sukey Sly told me if I went to old Margery, and took her a wheaten loaf, and crossed her palm with a silver penny, she’d tell me where to find ’em. Well, I went, and the old woman said she didn’t want to have aught to say to me. ‘Look ye,’ says I, ‘Margery, here I be, here’s the bread and here’s the money: I ha’ lost my startups, and you must tell me where to find them; and I wo’n’t budge till you do.’ So with that she puts her mouse down against the loaf, and finely he nibbled away, and she set of a brown stud for a bit, and then told me to wait for the first full moon, and then, exactly at midnight, to walk backwards from the yard gate to the dung mixen, with my eyes fixed on the moon, and that I should find them on the mixen; but if it were before or after twelve o’clock, and if I looked behind me, or took my eyes off the moon, the charm would be broke, and I should never see my startups again; and sure enough I never have seen ’em.”
There was a little titter among the women; and Sukey Sly, whose legs were set off in a pair of new red stockings, could not suppress a laugh at Jock’s story: but the clowns called out for justice, and Sir Oliver had much ado to pacify them. He did so at last, by assuring the old woman, that, on condition she told what was the great charm by which she was said to cure diseases, she should be set free.