The room quivered and sucked in its breath. Now the magistrate, and now, at the magistrate’s nod, the minister, questioned him. “You see the dog?—Where do you see it?—There? But something else is standing there! A woman is standing there.... Ha! Only the dog there, showing his teeth at you? Do you see no woman?... He sees no woman. He sees only the dog.” “The dog! the dog!” cried the boy. “The constable brought the dog in with him.... Oh, it wants to get at me! It’s trying to shake the constable off! Oh, oh, don’t let it!” And he writhed and twisted, half terrified and persuaded by the vividness of his own creation, deep down enjoying himself. Commotion and hard breathing held in the room and outside about the door and window. “He sees her as she is when she’s running with Satan!... Witch!... Witch!...” Mother Spuraway fell again upon her knees, beat her hands together with passion. “It’s not true—he’s lying!—Oh, sirs, are you going to hang me for what a sick child says?” North-End Farm raised an answering clamour. “Thou witch! ’Tis thou that liest! Take thy spells off him!” The greater part of the room became vocal, “’Tis not only that boy!—A many and a many things happening!—My arm, thou witch! I dug all day, and passed thee in the twilight, and next day ’twas like this!—The corn so thin and burned!—The old witch! She made a sign above my wife’s drink and she died and the babe died!—The witch! the witch! But she’s not alone.... She and the leech.... Yes, but others than the leech.... There are folk here who can tell.... The plague—she brought the plague—she and the Devil and her fellows.... The pond!—Tie her thumb and toe and try her in the water—” There came a surge forward. Mother Spuraway cowered and screamed. The squire might not object to the water trial in itself, but he objected and that strongly to any unruliness before Justice Carthew. The people were used to being cowed; his voice, bursting out against them, drove them back to a silence broken only by murmurs and intakes of the breath. The North-End Farm boy continuing noisy, and crying out, his father and mother had leave to take him from the sexton’s room and across to the ale-house. There was curiosity to see if the dog that was visible to him alone could follow. But no! At the door he cried out that it tried to spring after him, but could not pass the minister’s chair. From the ale-house itself presently came back word that he was much comforted and quiet and said that Master Clement was keeping the dog from him.