Audrey

Audrey looked at her with glazed, uncomprehending eyes, while the

gnome-like figure appeared to grow smaller, to melt out of the doorway. It

was a minute or more before the wayfarer thus left alone in the hut could

remember that she had been told to bar the door. Then her instinct of

obedience sent her to the threshold. Dusk was falling, and the waters of

the pool lay pale and still beyond the ebony cedars. Through the twilit

landscape moved the crone who had housed her for the night; but she went

not to the north, but southwards toward the river. Presently the dusk

swallowed her up, and Audrey was left with the ragged garden and the

broken fence and the tiny firelit hut. Reentering the room, she fastened

the door, as she had been told to do, and then went back to the hearth.

The fire blazed and the shadows danced; it was far better than last night,

out in the cold, lying upon dead leaves, watching the falling stars. Here

it was warm, warm as June in a walled garden; the fire was red like the

roses ... the roses that had thorns to bring heart's blood.

Audrey fell fast asleep; and while she was asleep and the night was yet

young, the miller whose mill stream had run dry, the keeper of a tippling

house whose custom had dwindled, the ferryman whose child had peaked and

pined and died, came with a score of men to reckon with the witch who had

done the mischief. Finding door and window fast shut, they knocked, softly

at first, then loudly and with threats. One watched the chimney, to see

that the witch did not ride forth that way; and the father of the child

wished to gather brush, pile it against the entrance, and set all afire.

The miller, who was a man of strength, ended the matter by breaking in the

door. They knew that the witch was there, because they had heard her

moving about, and, when the door gave, a cry of affright. When, however,

they had laid hands upon her, and dragged her out under the stars, into

the light of the torches they carried, they found that the witch, who, as

was well known, could slip her shape as a snake slips its skin, was no

longer old and bowed, but straight and young.

"Let me go!" cried Audrey. "How dare you hold me! I never harmed one of

you. I am a poor girl come from a long way off"-"Ay, a long way!" exclaimed the ferryman. "More leagues, I'll warrant,

than there are miles in Virginia! We'll see if ye can swim home, ye

witch!"

"I'm no witch!" cried the girl again. "I never harmed you. Let me go!"