The previous day had been sultry and wild, with spells of fierce sunshine that smote down upon honest people’s heads as they toiled in cornfield or potato-plot, bringing out great drops of sweat on sunburnt faces, and forcing more than one labourer to supplement the shade and comfort of his broad chip hat by a cool moist cabbage leaf. Withal furious gusts of wind rose every now and then--storm-wind, old Jan Belbin said, and he was considered wonderful weather-wise--wind that set the men’s shirt-sleeves flapping for all the world like the sleeves of a racing jockey, and blew the women’s aprons into the air, and twisted the maids’ hats round upon their heads if they so much as crossed the road to the well. Yet this wind would drop as suddenly as it had sprung up; the land would lie all bathed in fiery heat, and a curious sense of uneasiness and expectancy would seem to pervade the whole of Nature. The very beasts were disquieted in their pasture; the corn stood up straight and stiff, each ear, as it were, on the alert; not a leaf stirred in hedgerow or tree-top; and then “all to once,” as Jan Belbin pointed out, the storm-wind sprang up again, tossing the golden waste of wheat hither and thither like a troubled sea, and making every individual branch and twig creak and groan. Twilight was at last closing in with brooding stillness, and a group of lads, who had been working for an hour or two in the allotments, gathered idly round the gate, gossiping, and some of them smoking, before proceeding homewards. It was too dark, as Joe Pilcher declared, to see the difference between a ’tater and a turnip, and ’twas about time they were steppin’ anyways. He was in the act of relating some interesting anecdote with regard to last Saturday’s practice in the Cricket field, when he broke off, and pointed up the stony path which led past the allotments. “Hullo! Whatever’s that?” he cried. The bent outline of a small figure could be seen creeping along the irregular line of hedge. It was apparently hump-backed, and wore a kind of hood projecting over its face. “’Tis a wold hag, seemin’ly,” said Jim Ford, craning forward over the top rail. “There!” cried Joe, “I took it for a sprite, but I don’t know as I shouldn’t be just so much afeared of a witch any day. It be a witch, sure.” “Don’t be a sammy,” interposed an older man. “’Tis nothin’ but some poor wold body what has been gatherin’ scroff. They’ve felled a tree up-along in wood, an’ she’ve a-been a-pickin’ up all as she can lay hands on for her fire. There, ’tis wold Ann Kerley. I can see her now. She’ve a-got a big nitch o’ sticks upon her back, an’ she do croopy down under the weight on’t, an’ she’ve a-tied her handkercher over her bonnet, poor body, to keep it fro’ blowin’ away. There’s your hag for you, Joe!”