her bag and staff, she seated herself on a very low stool, close by the little fire-place, and applied her breath to the embers. The white ashes flew off, and laid bare the glowing embers. To these she applied a few dry sticks which she had brought with her, and a warm and cheerful flame, accompanied by a light crackling noise, soon blazed comfortably before her. “I wonder where the master is this blessed day,” were her first words, “and Mistress Kate, that was God’s angel to me, and the rest of them. Wherever they are, Christ comfort them, and bless them: they were good friends to me, and to many. I never came to the gate, and went away without a measure of meal and a kind word; and it was a good day for my poor soul when the beautiful lady first talked to me:”--she stopped, and put on another stick or two;--“and Parson Juxon, that made me leave the pit, and gave me a bit of a cot to myself at Old Beech, where he and I would have been now but for the wars and the villainies of those devils that burned his house over his head, and made a bonfire to roast me, if it had not been God’s will to make ’em fall out about it. They called me ‘a child of hell,’ I mind:--well, it is not the first time--many a score times gentle and simple have called me the same, till within the last two years, and I thought it was all over, and I got to heaven already; but there’s a weary bit yet for me. I hope it wo’n’t be long. Now, if parson was here, he’d scold and look pleasant at me, and say, ‘God’s time’s the best time, Margery.’ Well, now, I’ve lost him--God’s will be done. I’ve been a poor sinful body all my days; but I never harmed any more than a curse might, and little ill could that do to any but my own poor self. It’s well it couldn’t; for if it had been able to kill, I should have sent it after many a one, and might again. God help me! I’ll be burnt for a witch some day yet; and, truth to say, I’ve many a time wished I was one,--but that’s all over. I say the Lord’s Prayer different now.” Here she clasped and raised her lean and withered hands, and said it in a humble whisper on her knees. Cuthbert was agitated terribly; but he dared not speak, he dared not enter. “Who shall say,” thought his better mind, “who shall say that the blessed One, who taught his disciples thus to pray, is not present, dimly seen, perhaps, but felt with secret reverence and affection?” Her prayer said, the old woman put a little earthen pot on the fire, and again seated herself on the stool by the side of it. “Ah! it’s no merry Christmas,” said she, “here, or any where else; but I have known a worse; and I think this is safe hiding, for the folk all think the place haunted. Well, I must thank God, and make the best of it.” As she ended these words, she began humming the air of an old Christmas carol, and at last sung, in the mournful voice of age, this ancient fragment:--