‘Where are you taking me?’ she said. Mrs. Leak made no answer, but in the darkness she took hold of Laura’s hand. There was no need for further explanation. They were going to the Witches’ Sabbath. Mrs. Leak was a witch too; a matronly witch like Agnes Sampson, she would be Laura’s chaperone. The night was full of voices. Padding rustic footsteps went by them in the dark. When they had reached the brow of the hill a faint continuous sound, resembling music, was borne towards them by the light wind. Laura remembered how young Billy Thomas, suffering from toothache, had played all night upon his mouth-organ. She laughed. Mrs. Leak squeezed her hand.
The meeting-place was some way off, by the time they reached it Laura’s eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness. She could see a crowd of people walking about in a large field; lights of some sort were burning under a hedge, and one or two paper garlands were looped over the trees. When she first caught sight of them, the assembled witches and warlocks seemed to be dancing, but now the music had stopped and they were just walking about. There was something about their air of disconnected jollity which reminded Laura of a Primrose League gala and fête. A couple of bullocks watched the Sabbath from an adjoining field.
Laura was denied the social gift, she had never been good at enjoying parties. But this, she hoped, would be a different and more exhilarating affair. She entered the field in a most propitious frame of mind, which not even Mr. Gurdon, wearing a large rosette like a steward’s and staring rudely and searchingly at each comer before he allowed them to pass through the gate, was able to check.
‘Old Goat!’ exclaimed Mrs. Leak in a voice of contemptuous amusement after they had passed out of Mr. Gurdon’s hearing. ‘He thinks he can boss us here, just as he does in the village.’
‘Is Mr. Jones here?’ inquired Laura.
Mrs. Leak shook her head and laughed.
‘Mr. Gurdon doesn’t allow him to come.’
‘I suppose he doesn’t think it suitable for a clergyman.’
Perhaps it was as well that Mr. Gurdon had such strict views. In spite of the example of Mr. Lowis, that old reading parson, it might be a little awkward if Mr. Jones were allowed to attend the Sabbath.
But that apparently was not the reason. Mrs. Leak was beginning to explain when she broke off abruptly, coughed in a respectful way, and dropped a deep curtsey. Before them stood an old lady, carrying herself like a queen, and wearing a mackintosh that would have disgraced a tinker’s drab. She acknowledged Mrs. Leak’s curtsey with an inclination of the head, and turned to Laura,