The Heart

"Nay, nay, Harry," she cried out, with a pitiful strength of anger.

"I doubt if it be the will of the Lord. I doubt if it be not the

devil--Catherine, Catherine--Harry, my brain reels when I

think that she should have done it--a paltry ring, and to let

you--"

"It may be that she had not her wits," I said. "Such things have

been, I have heard, and especially in the case of a woman with

jewels. It may be that she knew not what she did, and in any case I

pray you to think no more of it, dear madam." And all the time I

spoke I was smoothing her old forehead under the flapping frills of

her cap.

One black woman was there in the room, sitting in the shadow of the

bed-curtains, fast asleep and making a strange purring noise like a

cat as she slept.

Suddenly Madam Cavendish clutched hard at my hand. "Harry," she

said, "I sent for you because I have lain here fretting lest Mary

and Catherine get not home in safety with only the black people to

guard them. I fear lest the Indians may be lurking about."

"Dear Madam Cavendish," I said, "you know that we stand in no more

danger from the Indians."

"Nay," she persisted, "we can never tell what plans may be brewing

in such savage brains. I pray thee, Harry, ride to meet them and see

if they be safe."

I laughed, for the danger from Indians was long since past, but said

readily enough that I would do as she wished, being, in fact, glad

enough of a gallop in the moonlight, with the prospect of meeting

Mary. So in a few minutes I was in the saddle and riding toward

Jamestown. The night was very bright with the moon, and there was a

great mist rising from the marshy lands, and such strangely pale and

luminous developments in the distances of the meadows, marshalling

and advancing and retreating, like companies of spectres, and

lingering as if for consultation on the borders of the woods, with

floating draperies caught in the boughs thereof, that one might have

considered danger from others than Indians. And, indeed, I often

caught the note of an owl, and once one flitted past my face and my

horse shied at the evil bird, which is thought by the ignorant to be

but a feathered cat and of ill omen, and indeed is considered by

many who are wise to have presaged ill oftentimes, as in the cases

of the deaths of the emperors Valentinian and Commodus. Be that as

it may, I, having a pistol with me, shot at the bird, and, though I

was as good a shot as any thereabouts, missed, and away it flew,

with a great hoot as of laughter, which I am ready to swear I heard

multiplied in a trice, as if the bird were joined by a whole

company, and my horse shied again and would have bolted had I not

held him tightly. Now, this which I am about to relate I am ready to

swear did truly happen, though it may well be doubted. I had come

within a short distance of Jamestown when I reached two houses of a

small size, not far apart, not much removed from the fashion of the

negro cabins, but inhabited by English folk. In the one dwelt a man

who had been transported for a grievous crime, whether justly or not

I cannot say, but his visage was such as to condemn him, and he was

often in his cups and had spent many days in the stocks, and had

made frequent acquaintance with the whipping-post, and with him

dwelt his wife, an old dame with a tongue which had once earned her

the ducking-stool in England. As I passed this house I saw over the

door a great bunch of dill and vervain and white thorn, which is

held to keep away witches from the threshold if gathered upon a May

day. And I knew well the reason, for not many rods distant was the

hut where dwelt one Margery Key, an ancient woman, who had been

verily tied crosswise and thrown in a pond for witchcraft and been

weighed against the church Bible, and had her body searched for

witch-marks and the thatch of her house burned. I know not why she

had not come to the stake withal, but instead she had fled to

Virginia, where, witches being not so common, were treated with more

leniency. It may have been that she had escaped the usual fate of

those of her kind by being considered by some a white witch, and one

who worked good instead of ill if approached rightly, though many

considered that they who approached a white witch for the purpose of

profiting by her advice or warning, were of equal guilt, and that it

all led in the end to mischief. Be that as it may, this old dame

Margery Key dwelt there alone in her little hut so over-thatched and

grown by vines, and scarce showing the shaggy slant of its roof

above the bushes, that it resembled more the hole of some timid and

wary animal than a human habitation. And if any visited her for

consultation it was by night and secretly, and no one ever caught

sight of her except now and then the nodding white frill of her cap

in the green gloom of a window or the painful bend of her old back

as she gathered sticks for her fire in the woods about. How she

lived none knew. A little garden-patch she had, and a hive or two of

bees, and a red cow, which many affirmed to have the eye of a demon,

and there were those who said that her familiars stole bread for her

from the plantation larders, and that often a prime ham was missed

and a cut of venison, with no explanation, but who can say? Without

doubt there are strange things in the earth, but we are all so in

the midst of them, and even a part of their workings, that we can

have no outside foothold to take fair sight thereof. Verily a man

might as well strive to lift himself by his boot-straps over a

stile.