The priest went away after that, drawing on home. When he came home he got, after a while, a chapel and a parish, and he was quiet and satisfied, and everybody in the place had a great respect for him, for he was a fine priest in the parish. He was like this for a good while, until a day came when he went to visit a great gentleman who was in that place; just as yourself might come into this garden,[55] or like that, and they were walking outside in the garden, the gentleman and himself. When he was going up a walk in this garden a lady met him, and when she was passing the priest on the walk, she struck a light little blow of her hand on his cheek. It was that lady who had been hanged who was in it, but the priest did not recognise her, [seemingly] alive, and thought she was some other fine lady who was there.
She went then into a summer house, and the priest went in after her, and had a little conversation with her, and it is likely that she beguiled him with melodious conversation and talk before she went out. When she herself and he himself were ready to depart, and when they were separating from one another, she turned to him and said, "you ought to recognize me," said she, "I am the woman that you hanged; I told you that day that I would have you yet, and I shall. I came to you now to damn you." With that she vanished out of his sight.
He gave himself up then; he said that he was damned for ever. He was getting no rest, either by day or by night, with the fear that was on him at her having met him again. He said that it was not in his power either to go back or forward—that he was to be damned for ever. That thought was preying on him day and night.
He went away then, and he went to the Bishop, and he told him the whole story and made his confession to him, and told him how she met him and tempted him. Then the bishop told him that he was damned for ever, and that there was nothing in the world to save him or able to save him.
"I have no hope at all, so?" said the priest.
The bishop said to him, "you have no hope at all, till you get a small load of cambrick needles,"—the finest needles at all—"and get a ship, and go out to sea, and according as you go every hundred yards on the sea you must throw away a needle from you out of the ship. Be going then," says he, "for ever," says he, "until you have thrown away the last of them. Unless you are able to gather them up out of the sea and to bring them all to me back again here, you will be lost for ever."
"Well that's a thing that I never shall do; it fails me to do that," said the priest.
He got the ship and the needles and went out to sea, according as he used to go a piece he used to throw a needle from him. He was going until he was very far away from land, and until he had thrown out the last needle. By the time he had thrown away the last needle, his own food was used up, and he had not a thing to eat. He spent three days then, on end, without bite or sup or drink, or means to come by them.