Joan walked beside Mother Spuraway. In the last three or four days the hand of withholding had been lifted from the prisoners so that they might get their strength.... Joan walked with a colourless, thin cheek and shadowed eyes, but walked steadily. But Mother Spuraway could not drag her limbs across the stones; a gaoler held her roughly up with a force that drew a moan. Presently, his grasp relaxing, she stumbled again and fell. Joan stooped and raised her, then with her arm about her bore her on. “Thank’ee, my pretty maid,” said Mother Spuraway. “I’ll do as much for you when you are old!” CHAPTER XXI THE WITCH THE morrow came and went in heat and tenseness and excitement. The third day arrived and passed with no lessening. The fourth day came and the fever ran more high than before. The Crown, the jury, and the Witch Judge, the throng nodding approval, had now checked off Mother Spuraway, Grace Maybank, Dorothy and her nephew, Elspeth No-Wit, and the youth. It remained on this day to concentrate upon and finally dash to earth the main sorcerer and that one who patently had been his paramour and adjutant—the “maiden” of the wicked crew. There were many witnesses and much wild testimony. Small facts were puffed out to become monstrous symbols. Where facts failed, the inflamed and morbid imagination invented. It was strange hearing to the two who had dwelled at the Oak Grange and Heron’s cottage.... They questioned Elspeth No-Wit. “You had a meeting the night before the leech was taken?” Elspeth laughed and nodded. “What did you do there?” “We had a big kettle and a great fire. Everybody dropped what she loved best in the kettle. We played and clapped hands and jumped as high as the tree-tops. When we clapped our hands, it thundered, and when we ran around the kettle the wind blew our clothes away.” “You were brewing the storm that broke next day?” “Oh, aye!” “The leech and Joan Heron were with you?” Elspeth twisted her body and peered around. “Is that Joan Heron and is that the leech? They ran round thrice to our once, and they kissed the closest, and at last they wandered away.” Will the smith’s son was called. “You stopped at Heron’s cottage that Sunday evening?” Will stammered, looking wild, hollow-eyed, and awed. “Aye, I did, please Your Honour!—But I never would have stopped but that it was storming so.—My mother was with me, please you, sir.” “No one means you any ill.—It was dark under the clouds without, but there was a light inside the cottage—a red light?” “Yes, sir; bright like firelight.” “Hardly, I think, true firelight: a red and strange light.—It was well after the hour when the leech had been taken from this Oak Grange?” “Aye, Your Honour. ’Twas close to dark.” “With the constable and his men, and Master Carthew riding a part of the way, he must then have been upon the Hawthorn road, his face set to this gaol?” “He must have been so, sir, but—”