"Of a witch that dressed as a nun and stole into a convent," she said, and rocked herself woefully where she sat beside her washing board at the edge of the pool. "They found witch marks upon her. They should have drowned the child, but he took it by force and with great oaths and sent it into foreign shires. And that made his sin the heavier." "Ah, well!" the Young Lovell said. "You Ruffyns," the old woman went on lamenting, "for, call yourselves never so much Lovells, Ruthvens ye will remain, and ye are never of this countryside but of the Red Welsh or the Black Welsh or of some heathen countryside. And always ye have had truck with witches and warlocks. The first of ye that came into these parts was your grandfather’s father and he had a black stone, like a coal but not like a coal. That was given him by a witch that loved him, as she went on the way to the faggots, for they burnt her. And without it, how could he have made his marvellous booties, riding thro’ the land of France, from how ’twas to how ’twas, and sacking the marvellous rich and walled cities? And I had thought to have saved you from these hussies, seeing that you might well be of a better race, your mother being of a German house and the Almains, as all the world tells, being foul and dirty in their lives, but almighty pious so that nine crucifixes in ten that we buy come from there. Therefore as you came first from your mother’s womb I put the fat of good bacon in your mewling mouth, and your sleeves I tied with green ribbons, and I took you to the low shed in the tennis court and rolled you down the roof—and the one thing should have saved you from the fiends and the other from the witches, and the third even from the fairy people. And these things are older than holy water, though you had enough of that...." "May it save me yet!" the Young Lovell said. "But what I now have to consider is how to take my mother from these people and to get back what is mine own." "Aye," the old woman said, "you were ever a good child to your mother; therefore I had hopes of you. For your sisters, they were all black Ruffyns, bitter and so curst that they had no need for resort to the powers of evil to help them." "Tell me truly now, old woman," her master said, "how long may my mother live and abide the treatment that she now has and not die?"