The crowd dispersed silently and slowly. Some among them, who had been more thoughtless than malicious, were already beginning to realise that Wigan's words were true. The sumner, however, marched away whistling a tune. Then Wigan, with his shamefaced helpers, Erenbald and Baderun, and a fourth who had come near them as if he too were sorry for the evil which he had helped to do, inasmuch as he had not stood out to prevent its being done, lifted the frail light corpse, and bore it a little way into the wood. There, in the soft fresh green, they dug a grave, and laid in it the body of Mother Haldane. "We'd best lay a cross of witch hazel over her," suggested Baderun. "If things was all right with her, it can't do no harm; and if so be--" "Lay what you like," answered Wigan. "I don't believe, and never did, that she was a witch. What harm did you ever know her do to any one?" "Nay, but Mildred o' th' Farm, over yonder, told me her black cow stopped giving milk the night Mother Haldane came up to ask for a sup o' broth, and she denied it." "Ay, and Hesela by the Brook--I heard her tell," added Erenbald, "that her hens, that hadn't laid them six weeks or more, started laying like mad the day after she'd given the White Witch a gavache. What call you that?" "I call it stuff and nonsense," replied Wigan sturdily, "save that both of them got what they deserved: and so being, I reckon that God, who rewards both the righteous and the wicked, had more to do with it than the White Witch." "Eh, Wigan, but them's downright wicked words! You'd never go to say as God Almighty takes note o' hens, and cows, and such like?" "Who does, then? How come we to have any eggs and milk?" "Why, man, that's natur'." "I heard a man on Bensington Green, one day last year," answered Wigan, "talking of such things; and he said that `nature' was only a fool's word for God. And said I to myself, That's reason." Wigan, being one of that very rare class who think for themselves, was not comprehended by his commissionary tours, had been to this man's heart as a match to tinder. "Ay, and he said a deal more too: but it wouldn't be much use telling you. There--that's enough. She'll sleep quiet there. I'll just go round by her hut, and see if her cat's there--no need to leave the creature to starve." "Eh, Wigan, you'd never take that thing into your house? It's her familiar, don't you know? They always be, them black cats--they're worse than the witches themselves." "Specially when they aren't black, like this? I tell you, she wasn't a witch; and as to the cat, thou foolish man, it's nought more nor less than a cat. I'll take it home to Brichtiva my wife,--she's not so white-livered as thou." "Eh, Wigan, you'll be sorry one o' these days!" "I'm as sorry now as I can be, that I didn't come up sooner: and I don't look to be sorry for aught else."