"Good Lord, don't let them burn me!" said poor old Haldane, inside the hut. "I'd rather be drowned, if Thou dost not mind." Did the good Lord not mind what became of the helpless old creature, who, in her ignorance and misery, was putting her trust in Him? It looked like it, as the mob broke open the frail door, and roughly hauled out the frailer occupant of the wretched hut. "Burn her!" The cry was renewed: and it came from one of the two persons most prominent in the mob--that handsome girl to whom Haldane had refused the revenge she coveted upon Brichtiva. "Nay!" said the other, who was the Bishop's sumner, "that would be irregular. Burning's for heretics. Tie her hands and feet together, and cast her into the pond: that's the proper way to serve witches." The rough boys among the crowd, to whom the whole scene was sport--and though we have become more civilised in some ways as time has passed, sport has retained much of its original savagery even now--gleefully tied together Haldane's hands and feet, and carried her, thus secured, to a large deep pond about a hundred yards from her abode. This was the authorised test for a witch. If she sank and was drowned, she was innocent of the charge of witchcraft; if she swam on the surface, she was guilty, and liable to the legal penalty for her crime. Either way, in nine out of ten cases, the end was death: for very few thought of troubling themselves to save one who proved her innocence after this fashion. [Note 2.] The boys, having thus bound the poor old woman into a ball, lifted her up, and with a cry of--"One--two--three!" flung her into the pond. At that moment a man broke through the ring that had formed outside the principal actors. "What are you doing now? Some sort of mischief you're at, I'll be bound--you lads are always up to it. Who are you ducking? If it's that cheat Wrangecoke, I'll not meddle, only don't--What, Mother Haldane! Shame on you! Colgrim, Walding, Oselach, Amfrid!--shame on you! What, _you_, Erenbald, that she healed of that bad leg that laid you up for three months! And _you_, Baderun, whose child she brought back well-nigh from the grave itself! If you are men, and not demons, come and help me to free her!"