"What!" cried Mother Goodhugh, turning on Sir Mark. "You, do you think me mad? Nay, though I might have been, through his sins. Hear, young man, and judge between us. I was a prosperous, happy woman, with a loving husband and a dear son, who led a peaceful life till yon demon deluded both into coming and helping him in his devilish trade. I knew how it would be and prophesied to them that ill would come; but he fought against me, and gained them over. First my poor boy was brought home to me stiff and cold--stiff and cold, alas!--drowned in the Pool, and swept beneath yon devil's engine of a wheel. A year later, and, with a rush and a whirlwind of fire, the great powder-barn was swept into the air with a roar of thunder. I heard it, and came running, for I knew ill had come, and I was in time to fall on my knees by the blackened corpse of my dead husband--scarred, torn, shocking to behold; and in my widowed agony I raised my hands to Heaven to call down vengeance, and cursed his destroyer as I curse him now." "Shame on you, Mother Goodhugh, shame!" cried a voice; and pale, and with eyes red with recent weeping, Mace Cobbe ran forward to throw one arm across her father's breast, and stand between him and the old woman, as if to shield him from her anger, as, advancing with upraised stick and her eyes flashing with excitement, she seemed no inapt representative of a modern sibyl. "Ah, you here, young Jezebel?" cried the woman, beside herself now, as she worked herself into a fierce rage. "Listen, good people; listen once more, as I tell you that the day will come when Jeremiah Cobbe shall curse the hour when he was born, when he shall gaze down upon the blackened corpse of this his miserable spawn, even as I gazed upon the burned and fire-scarred body of my dear; and I tell you that the day shall come when in his misery and God-forgotten despair he shall hurl himself into yonder Pool, and be swept down beneath his devilish wheel to be taken out dead--dead, do you hear?--as they drew out my boy." "Oh, shame, Mother Goodhugh, shame!" cried Mace again. "Come away, father, come away." "Nay, child," he said, calmly. "I'll face the storm like a man. It will be the sooner over." "Never!" cried the old woman, with the foam gathering on her dry lips, as she rolled her red and bloodshot eyes. "I'll pursue you to your death. Curse you! curse you!" "Oh, shame, old woman," said Sir Mark, angrily. "Think of your own end, and how curses come home to roost."