“Well now,” said this farmer in later years, “it were a coorious thing it were, but as I were goin’ along thickey lane there I seed Bessie Baker, and I turn’d, and sure enough her were lookin’ over her shoulder to me, and wot’s most coorious of all--her’s my missus now. After that, don’t ee go and tell me as how White Witches knows nothin’. But there’s somethin’ more to the tale. I heerd afterwards as Bessie, her’d consulted old Nan, and Nan had said to her, ‘Go along Narracott lane, and the first man as you sees, when you’ve past, turn and look; and if he’s lookin’ over his shoulder to you, that’s the one.’ There’s facts; and wi’ them facts staring of you in the face, don’t you go and say White Witches is nort.” There is an old woman I know--she is still alive. It was six years since she bought a bar of yellow or any other soap. But that is neither here nor there. She was esteemed a witch--a white one of course. She was a God-fearing woman, and had no relations with the Evil One, of that one may be sure. How she subsisted was a puzzle to the whole parish. But, then, she was generally feared. She received presents from every farm and cottage. Sometimes she would meet a child coming from school, and stay it, and fixing her wild dark eye on it, say, “My dear, I knawed a child jist like you--same age, red rosy cheeks, and curlin’ black hair. And that child shrivelled up, shrumped like an apple as is picked in the third quarter of the moon. The cheeks grew white, the hair went out of curl, and she jist died right on end and away.” Before the day was out, a chicken or a basket of eggs as a present from the mother of that child was sure to arrive. I have given an account of this same old woman in my _An Old English Home_, and will here add a few more particulars about her. She possessed of her own a two-storied house, thatched, built mainly of cob, but with two chimneys of brick. Some five-and-twenty years ago the house was habitable enough. The thatch had given way in several places, but she could not or would not have it repaired. Perhaps she had not the means; but the farmers offered her straw, and a thatcher would have done the work for her gratis, or only for her blessing. She would not. “God made the sky,” she said, “and that is the best roof of all.” After a while, however, the roof became leaky everywhere. Then she sought shelter for her head by stuffing up the chimney of her bedroom fireplace with a sack filled with chaff, and pushing her bed to the hearth, she slept with her head and pillow under the sack. But access to this bedroom became difficult, as the stairs, exposed to the rain, rotted and gave way, and she was compelled to ascend and descend by an improvised ladder. [Illustration: MARIANN VOADEN, BRATTON] [Illustration: MARIANN VOADEN’S COTTAGE, BRATTON] The rector of the parish went to her and remonstrated at the dangerous condition of the tenement.