“Yes, ’tis me, Mrs. Haycraft; but no witch. Only a woman as have seed sorrow too—though no sorrow like your sorrow just now. I’ve come to tell ’e I love ’e still, an’ I can’t bide away from ’e no more, an’ I won’t. You shan’t drive me off.” Honor breathed hard. “Everything do happen all to once,” she said. “Maybe I didn’t ought to have intruded; but I’m older than you, an’ I thought—” “You be safe. I’m too weak to bear malice against you. My darling’s screwed down now. If you’d seed him yesterday, you’d have called back your wicked word, Avisa Mogridge. He weren’t ugly after he died—he—oh, God, an’ not one sound of his little noise in the house. It’s killing me.” “To be frank with you, Honor, you must marry again. You’m only twenty-three. Yes, I know you be. An’ ’twas my little girls put them flowers ’pon your window-sill last June on your birthday morning. They done it afore daybreak. An’—an’—oh, woman, I be broken-hearted for ’e; God’s my judge if I ban’t.” Mrs. Haycraft was rocking herself backward and forward, and crying. Suddenly she rose up. “Come an’ see the coffin,” she said. “Several of the gentry have sent greenhouse flowers to me. There’s a butivul smell to ’em.” “I will come; an’ I want to say this. My girls—do ’e let ’em help with the thing you want. They’d make six with t’other children. Do ’e let ’em, Honor.” “’Tis too late; they can’t get black now.” “You forget my old mother died last Christmas.” “Ah! so her did—that’s lucky,” said Mrs. Haycraft. After the funeral the widows walked together. They left their friends at Postbridge, then returned home side by side. As they ascended the hill, with Avisa’s two little girls marching together behind them, a robin suddenly sang out sharp and clear. “Thank the Lord I’ve heard that,” said Honor, very earnestly, alluding to an ancient fable. Her reconciled friend nodded. “I be very glad also,” she said. “To hear redbreast singing after a child is buried do mean the little one’s safe in Heaven; though, all the same, God only knows where the babbies should go to, if not to Him.” WITH BELL, BOOK AND CANDLE CHAPTER I On a frosty night, when George III was King, certain men, for the most part familiar customers, sat in the bar of the “Golden Anchor,” Daleham; and amongst them appeared that welcome addition to the usual throng: a stranger. For his benefit old tales were told anew and ancient memories ransacked; because this West country fishing village enjoyed rich encrustation of legend and romance, and boasted a roll call of great names and great deeds. Here dwelt the spirits of bygone free-traders, visible by night in the theatre of their lawless enterprises; and here even more notable stories, touching more notable phantoms, might also be gleaned from ancient intelligencers at the time of evening drinking.