The rumours which I had often heard of her being a witch passed with painful distinctness across my mind, and I trembled violently. Presently she knelt with folded hands and began to mutter some indistinguishable words in a strange tone. Flames now darted out of the earth, and huge smouldering clouds of smoke rolled over the slimy walls, concealing their hideousness from the eye. At length the dead silence that had hitherto reigned unbroken was dissipated by a tremendous cry which shook the house to its centre, and I saw six black, indefinable figures gliding through the darkness bearing a funeral bier on which lay arranged, as I had seen her the previous evening, the form of Cecilia Standon. Her dark eyes were closed, and their long lashes lay motionless on a cheek pale as marble. She was quite stiff and dead. At this appalling sight I could restrain myself no longer, and uttering a loud shriek I sprang from behind the pillar. My wife saw me. She started from her kneeling position, and rushed furiously towards where I stood, exclaiming in tones rendered tremulous by excessive fury: ‘Wretch, wretch, what demon has lured thee hither to thy fate?’ With these words she seized me by the throat and attempted to strangle me. I screamed and struggled in vain. Life was ebbing apace when suddenly she loosened her grasp, tottered, and fell dead. When I was sufficiently recovered from the effects of her infernal grip to look around I saw by the light of the candle a little man in a green coat striding over her and flourishing a bloody dagger in the air. In his sharp, wild physiognomy I immediately recognised the fairy who six months ago had given me the ring. That was the occasion of my present situation. He had stabbed my wife through the heart, and thus afforded me opportune relief at the moment when I so much needed it. After tendering him my most ardent thanks for his kindness I ventured to ask what we should do with the dead body. ‘Leave that to me,’ he replied. ‘But now as the day is dawning, and I must soon be gone, do you wish to return to your former rank of a happy, honest labourer, being deprived of the beauty which has been the source of so much trouble to you, or will you remain as you are? Decide quickly, for my time is limited.’ I replied unhesitatingly, ‘Let me return to my former rank,’ and no sooner were the words out of my mouth than I found myself standing alone at the porch of my humble cottage, plain and coarse as ever, without any remains of the extreme comeliness with which I had been so lately invested. I cast a glance at the tall towers of Ducie Castle which appeared in the distance faintly illuminated by the light reflected from rosy clouds hovering over the eastern horizon, and then, stooping as I passed beneath the lowly lintel, once more crossed the threshold of my parental hut.