She never ate with the family of her employer as did every other worker in house or on farm, nor was it evident that she brought food with her. The minister suspected she ate nocake, which she could easily hide in her pockets. She never asked for water, nor cider, nor switchel, nor kill-devil, nor had anyone ever seen her drink. Debby Nichols once saw a bumble-bee fly buzz-buzz out of her mouth as she wove in the minister’s loom-loft. But the minister said it was only a hornet flying past her--the garret was full of them. But, sure enough, at that very hour Joe Spink fell from his horse on the old Pequot trail from Wickford and broke his leg. Joe said a big bumble-bee stung the horse on the nose and made him rear and plunge. Joe had had high words with the witch over some metheglin he had tried to buy from her the previous week, for she brewed as well as she wove. The minister said that if metheglin had been the only drink Joe ever bought he wouldn’t have fallen from his horse, and that it wasn’t the first bee Joe had had in his bonnet. One day some careless darkies in a kitchen set on fire a hank of tow that was being hetchelled by the chimney-side. The sudden blaze extended to a row of freshly ironed sheets, then to a wool-wheel, and soon a dense smoke and darting flames filled the room. All ran out of the house, some for water, some for buckets, some for help, and no one thought of the witch in the loom-loft. The bang and rattle of her work made her ignorant of the noise and commotion below, and as the smoke entered the loft she thought, “But that chimney do smoke!” Finally a conviction of danger came to her and she made her way down the loft-ladder and through the entry with difficulty to the open air. “Where’s the cat?” was her abrupt greeting to the shamefaced folk who began to apologize spasmodically for their neglect to alarm her. “I saw her an hour ago on the spare bed in the fore room”--and back into the house rushed the witch, to return in a few moments with Tabby safely in her arms. This act of course deserved scant praise. Everyone murmured that there was probably some good reason for doing it, that everyone knew witches and cats had close relations, that the house didn’t burn down anyway, and probably she knew it wasn’t going to.