[Outside, the faint cawings of crows are heard. Putting down her tongs and hammer, Goody Rickby strides to the double door, and flinging it wide open, lets in the gray light of dawn. She looks out over the fields and shakes her fist.]
So ye’re up before me and the sun, are ye? [Squinting against the light.] There’s one! Nay, two. Aha! One for sorrow, Two for mirth— Good! This time we’ll have the laugh on our side. [She returns to the forge, where again the fire has died out.] Dickon! Fire! Come, come, where be thy wits?
THE VOICE [Sleepily from the forge.] ’Tis early, dame.
GOODY RICKBY The more need— [Takes up her tongs.]
THE VOICE [Screams.] Ow!
GOODY RICKBY Ha! Have I got thee?
[From the blackness of the forge she pulls out with her tongs, by the right ear, the figure of a devil, horned and tailed. In general aspect, though he resembles a mediæval familiar demon, yet the suggestions of a goatish beard, a shrewdly humorous smile, and (when he speaks) the slightest of nasal drawls, remotely simulate a species of Yankee rustic. Goody Rickby substitutes her fingers for the tongs.]
Now, Dickon!
DICKON Deus! I haven’t been nabbed like that since St. Dunstan tweaked my nose. Well, sweet Goody?
GOODY RICKBY The bellows!