"Hold, hold, Master Nowell!" rejoined Nicholas; "I can make great allowance for your anger, which is natural considering your disappointment, but I will not permit such unwarrantable insinuations to be thrown out against Mistress Nutter. You agreed to abide by Sir Ralph Assheton's award, and you must not complain if it be made against you. Do you imagine that this stream can have changed its course in a single night; or that yon sheepfold has been removed to the further side of it?"
"I do," replied Nowell.
"And so do I," cried Potts; "it has been accomplished by the aid of—"
But feeling himself checked by a glance from the reeve, he stammered out, "of—of Mother Demdike."
"You declared just now that marks, meres, and boundaries, were unremovable, Master Potts," said the reeve, with a sneer; "you have altered your opinion."
The crestfallen attorney was dumb.
"Master Roger Nowell must find some better plea than the imputation of witchcraft to set aside Mistress Nutter's claim," observed Richard.
"Yeigh, that he mun," cried James Device, and the hinds who supported him.
The magistrate bit his lips with vexation.
"There is witchcraft in it, I repeat," he said.