The squire was speaking with the constable and the farmer, the whole company of witch-takers hearkening to him rather than to Mother Spuraway. Had she not kept up a like babble clean from her own hut to Hawthorn? But the witch and straightening out the two walls were Master Clement’s concern. Not always subtle, he was subtle when it came to playing the inquisitor. When the rôle fell to him, it was as though he had suddenly endued himself with a mantle that fitted. Had he lived in a Catholic country, had he been born and baptized there into an unquerying group, it is not unlikely that sooner or later he would have found employment in the Holy Office, unlikelier yet that he would not have served with zeal and a consciousness of high devoir done that King in heaven. In a vast range of relations starkly literal, he was capable when it came to theological detection, of keen and imaginative work. The churchyard yews somewhat cut off the village street; the small present crowd were attending to the squire. Master Clement put some questions. Mother Spuraway, who was now moaning and rocking herself, roused as best she could to answer. Associates? She had no associates. What, in God’s name, should she have associates for? The leech? Well, the leech had taken her trade, that was all the association there— “Ha!” said Master Clement. “The same trade! She hath said that far!” Mother Spuraway looked at him and shrank affrighted. “My trade was to gather good herbs and make sick folk well. I meant that I was a leech as well as he.” “Leechcraft is not for women,” answered Master Clement. “But leechcraft was not his main trade. His trade is in souls to Satan, his own soul and others. I fear me that thou art indentured to that same master and may well speak of this atheist and sorcerer as thy fellow trafficker! Tell me what others thou art concerned with—” Mother Spuraway had an inward sturdiness, though age and weakness, fear and pain might yet betray it. “Concerned neither with him nor with others. Oh me! oh me! I’ve always stood on my own feet and harmed no one—” “They that stand on their own feet and by their own strength,” said the minister, “are naught. So they lean not upon Scripture and know that they are naught in themselves, but only by grace of another, they are already lost and have reached their hand to Satan.—Tell me if Grace Maybank be of thy company?”