Mr. Bilby believed that the shock of her parents’ death (for they were burned before her eyes, her mother crying out to her most piteously from the midst of flame) had broken the reins of memory. He thought she had forgotten everything that lay back of her reawakening to life on board his brig, which was called God’s Mercy. Also he comforted himself with the belief that if—as might be—she had learned any little tricks of witchery, or if she had ever been taken to Sabbat or Black Mass, or if she had looked upon the Prince of Hell, or even if (being led on by her parents) she had sworn to serve him, she would have forgotten all these things. She was born again and this time of God and to God, whom Mr. Bilby piously swore she should serve—Him and Him alone. The child had been so vehemently frightened she had forgotten all good and needful things, how to dress herself, how to eat with knife and spoon. She had forgotten the language of her birth. But of evil she remembered everything. 3 _He brings the Foundling to his own hearth and to the bosom of his Goodwife. There the goblin-child rewards Kindness and Mercy with Malediction and Evil. She overlooks the Goodwife._ Hannah, wife of Jared Bilby, would not accept her sterility with Christian fortitude. She railed against the wisdom of God, saying, ‘Mrs. Such-and-Such is but half so big and fine a woman as I, yet she has three sons. Goody This-and-That, the jade, can find but little favour in the eyes of her Maker, yet, to _her_ He sends more children than she can feed; but I, a pious, godly, praying woman, remain barren.’ Which, she wickedly averred, showed the injustice of Divinity. However, by curious chance or mischance, soon after Mr. Bilby set out with his men and brig for the coasts of France and Spain, she found herself with child. Some say the Lord tired of her railing, and, to punish her, first raised up her hopes and then sent Doll to blight them for her. Summer wore away. The nights grew chill. She was four months with child. Then Mr. Bilby, late one evening, came to Dawlish harbour. With him was his goblin-child, now grown pretty and playful. He arrived home in the black of the night and through pelting rain. The child he carried wrapped in his greatcoat to protect her from the cruel storm. He shook the shutter which he knew was by his wife’s bedboard. ‘Woman, woman, get up and open to me.’ The woman lay for warmth with her servant wench, Susan Croker. The fury of the night shewed forth the grandeur of God. The wind howled above the beating of the rain. Croker cried to her mistress not to open the door on such a night. It could be no living man who knocked, for it is on such vexed and angry nights as these the sea gives up its dead.