Whereupon Mother sank back in her chair, her hand pressed against the kerchief crossed over her bosom, and laughed shamefacedly, for it had been nothing more terrible that had startled her than big, purring Graymalkin, the cat, insinuating his sleek back under her hand as he arched and rubbed about her chair. And so, sitting down shamefacedly, she gathered Will up again and called him goose and little chuck, as if he and not she had been the one to jump and cry out. But he laughed boisterously. The joke was on Mother, and so he laughed loud, as becomes a man when the joke is on the women folk. "Ho!" said Will Shakespeare. "Sh-h-h!" said Mother. But the mischief was done and Will must get out of her lap, for little Brother Gilbert, awakened, was whimpering in the cradle. Will clambered up on the settle to think it all over. Mother had started and cried out. So after all was Mother afraid too? Of--of things? Had she said it all to reassure him? The magpie had flown screaming over the house for he had seen it. So what if the rest were true--that the cat, the cat without the tail stealing out at daybreak, had been--what Gammer said--a witch, weaving overnight her spell about poor Margery? He knew how it would have been; he had heard whispers about these things before; the dying embers on the hearth, the little waxen figure laid to melt thereon, the witch-woman weaving the charm about--now swifter, faster circling--with passes of hands above. [Illustration: "Will clambered up on the settle to think it all over"] Little Will Shakespeare, terrified at his own imaginings, clutched himself, afraid to move. Is that only a shadow yonder in the corner, now creeping toward him, now stealing away? What is that at the pane? Is it the frozen twigs of the old pippin, or the tapping fingers of some night creature without? Will Shakespeare falls off the settle in his haste and scuttles to Mother. Once there, he hopes she does not guess why he hangs to her so closely. But he is glad, nevertheless, when the candles are brought in. II But these things all vanish from mind when the outer door opens and Dad comes in stamping and blowing. Dad is late, but men are always late. It is expected that they should come in late and laugh at the women who chide and remind them that candles cost and that it makes the maid testy to be kept waiting. Men should laugh loud like Dad, and catch Mother under the chin and kiss her once, twice, three times. Will means to be just such a man when he grows up, and to fill the room with his big shoulders and bigger laugh as Dad is doing now while tossing Brother Gilbert. He, little Will, he will never be one like Goodman Sadler, Gammer's son-in-law, with a lean, long nose, and a body slipping flatlike through a crack of the door. And here Dad bends to tweak the ear of Will who would laugh noisily if it hurt twice as badly. It makes him feel himself a man to wink back those tears of pain.