'What is the matter? Oh, Betsy, see!' I cried. 'What are those men doing to that poor old woman? Look! they are dragging her to that pond! Poor creature! They will hurt her!'
'Mistress, 'tis only a witch!' cried Betsy, who had been told to call me Mistress now that I was going to be a great lady. 'Suchlike do much harm,' she continued. 'They sell their souls to the devil for gold; they meet each other on broomsticks riding through the air, and plot mischief. From such may we be delivered!' she went on fervently. 'They had better be drowned!' she concluded.
'No, no. 'Tis cruel! Tell Humphrey to stop.' And I myself called to the men to stay the horses bearing my litter, and looked out full of sympathy with the poor old creature. Was there no one to stand up for her, no one to stay this rough horse-play which was going on? Master Montgomery had always taught us to treat the aged with reverence, and therefore it seemed truly shocking to me, as also most alarming.
'Forsooth, Mistress Marg'et,' said Joseph, my lacquey, coming to my litter, ''tis the country roughs that are just wild to drown yon old witch.'
'But they shall not!' declared I vigorously; 'they shall not! Stop it, Joseph! Stop it at once!'
'Mistress, I cannot! The men are just mad! Hark at their shouts! They are wild to do it.'
'They shall not do it!' cried I. 'Tell them, Joseph, that Mistress Margaret Brown forbids it.'
Joseph and Timothy, the head man, and John, the other lacquey, looked timidly towards the crowd of excited men and boys who were shouting, gesticulating and urging on each other to drag along the old woman with cuffs and kicks.
I got out of my litter and looked round. It was such a beautiful country, on one side great woods just bursting into leaf, on the other green meadowland, threaded by a silvery stream and studded here and there with blossoming hawthorn trees. Nowhere could I see a house, yet some there must be not far distant, judging from the crowd of men and boys. Alone, with my few servants, what could I do? Who would have suspected that in such a lovely place there could be doings so outrageous?
'I must speak to them, Betsy,' I said, and across my mind flashed the thought that perhaps Master Montgomery was thinking of some such work as this when he spoke of that to which he believed I was being called.[[2]]