“That’s wot I was just a-going to tell ’ee,” whispered the old woman solemnly. “I suppose _he’s_ in there now, eh? Let ’un be, poor man. Let ’un be. May-be the Lord’s only waitin’ for these ’ere weeds to mend ’is poor swimey wits. You do as I do tell ’ee, mister, and ’twill be all smoothed out, as clean as church floor. You take these blessed weeds,--‘viviny-lobs’ my old mother did call ’em--and hang ’em to dry till they be dead and brown. Then doddy a sprinkle o’ good salt on ’em, and dip ’em in clear water. Be you followin’ me, mister Luke?” The young man nodded. “Then wot you got to do, is for to strike ’em against door-post, and as you strikes ’em, you says, same as I says now.” And Witch-Bessie repeated the following archaic enchantment. Marshy hollow woundy-wort, Growing on the holy dirt, In the Mount of Calvary There was thou found. In the name of sweet Jesus I take thee from the ground. O Lord, effect the same, That I do now go about. Luke listened devoutly to these mysterious words, and repeated them twice, after the old woman. Their two figures, thus concerted in magical tutelage, might, for all the youth’s modern attire, have suggested to a scholarly observer some fantastic heathen scene out of Apuleius. The spacious August sunshine lay splendid upon the fields about them, and light-winged swallows skimmed the surface of the glittering railway-line as though it had been a flowing river. When she was made assured in her mind that her pupil fully understood the healing incantation, Witch-Bessie shuffled off without further words. Her face, as she resumed her march in the direction of Hullaway, relapsed into such corpse-like rigidity, that, but for her mechanical movement, one might have expected the shameless flocks of starlings who hovered about her, to settle without apprehension upon her head. The two brothers labored harmoniously side by side in their work-shop all that forenoon. It was Saturday, and their companions were anxious to throw down their tools and clear out of the place on the very stroke of the one o’clock bell. James and Luke were both engaged upon a new stone font, the former meticulously chipping out its angle-mouldings, and the latter rounding, with chisel and file, the capacious lip of its deep basin. It was a cathedral font, intended for use in a large northern city. Luke could not resist commenting to his brother, in his half-humorous half-sentimental way, upon the queer fact that they two--their heads full of their own anxieties and troubles--should be thus working upon a sacred font which for countless generations, perhaps as long as Christianity lasted, would be associated with so many strange and mingled feelings of perturbation and hope. “It’s a comical idea,” he found himself saying, though the allusion was sufficiently unwise, “this idea of Gladys’ baptism.” He regretted his words the moment they were out of his mouth; but James received them calmly.