“We are coming to that. It is a fact, is it not, that witches and warlocks are able to transport themselves, with their master Satan’s aid, through the air—and that so swiftly that you cannot see their flight?” “Oh, yes, Your Honour,” said Will. “They fly in sieves, and sometimes they steal bats’ wings.” “Very well. Now you and your mother opened this cottage gate and went up the path to the door, and to reach that you had to pass the window. As you did that, passing close, you naturally put forehead to the frame, and looked within, and the place being filled with that red light—” “It wasn’t very bright,” said Will. “It was like a faggot had parted on the hearth, and there was now a dancing light, and now it was dark. There was nothing clear, and we heard naught because it was lightning and thundering—” “And you saw—” Will moistened his lips. “Yes, sir.—She and a black man were together—yes, please Your Honour, standing locked together—” “The black man was the leech?” “We didn’t know it, then, sir—How could we,” said Will, “when he was three miles the other side of Hawthorn with a guard? But I know it now. It was the leech.—And mother and I went on and knocked at the door, and she opened it—and there was nobody there but Joan—Joan and the grey and white cat.” “You stayed no time in that cottage?” “No, sir, please Your Honour. There was that that frightened us.” Will the smith’s son was motioned down. They set Mother Spuraway again in the eye of the court—Mother Spuraway, wrecked until she was nigh of the fellowship of Elspeth No-Wit. “You have told us that on this Sunday evening you were running in the shape of a hare through field and copse by the Hawthorn road. We have obtained from you that you saw the leech part from his natural body, having by black magic so blinded the guard that they went on bearing with them but a shadow, a double, and yet unsuspecting that cheat. Now tell us what the sorcerer did.” Mother Spuraway plucked at the stuff of her kirtle. “He mounted in the air.—Storm—storm—break storm!” “He went toward Hawthorn Wood?” “Yes, oh, yes! Hawthorn Wood.... Rue around the burned cot.” “That is, toward Heron’s cottage.—A time passed, and you, crouching then in the hazels by the road, saw him returning.—Now, mark! Was there a horseman upon this same Hawthorn road?” Mother Spuraway tried to mark, but her mind was wandering again. She preferred, it seemed, to talk of when she was a young woman and Spuraway and she had wandered, hand in hand, in Hawthorn Wood. But one wrenched her arm, and said something in her ear and brought her back with a shiver. “‘Horseman’? Oh, aye, Your Worships! A great, noble horseman.” “You saw the leech coming across the fields from the direction of Heron’s cottage, and you saw this horseman riding through the storm toward Hawthorn Village. What then?” “I ran under the earth,” said Mother Spuraway. “For I was now a pretty black mole, dressed all in velvet and blind—blind—blind—blind—”