"Afterwards. You'll want to eat. Will you come to the table, Mr. Webb, and help yourself?" He held a chair for her, but she refused it. "No, I've eaten. Sit down. Alexander, cut the pie." She began to walk up and down the room between the fireplace and the table, and Edward Webb, hardly looking at her, was aware of her strength and height and the brooding keenness of her eyes. In a little while she seated herself on a stool near the fire and Alexander broke the silence there had been. "Did you bring my father back?" he asked. Swiftly she turned her face and then Edward Webb understood Alexander's description of her; for though her features had no hardness, her eyes had the look of a hawk's in act to pounce and her head was quick on the firm neck, but she had a wide mouth capable of softness and she sat widespread, as though she held in her lap the cup of wisdom whence all might drink. And for an instant his interest in Alexander's subtlety swamped the eagerness with which he listened for her answer. "How do I know?" "You tried? Then you did it. What for?" "Ease a woman's heart, perhaps." Her voice had a deeper, longer note. He looked vindictive. "If we were back a few hundred years, we'd get you burnt for a witch." "Oh no, Alexander; the real witches were never burnt, or where was their witchcraft?" "Well, if he goes off another time, you can magic him over a precipice." "Hush!" Edward Webb hissed nervously. No one heeded him. "If you want that done, you can use your own hands to it. Then you'll be hanged. But that'll not happen. I can't see that. Did they never tell you about the black dog?" "Which one?" "The one on your shoulder, my lad." "Daft talk," he muttered. "You get what you give, you see." Edward Webb's face was illumined. "That's the world's rule," he said. She eyed him sharply. "Not the world's." He made his courteous inclination of acknowledgment. "Not the world's," he agreed. "I'm lost," said Alexander, looking from one to the other. "That's the dog's fault," she teased him. He laughed through his annoyance. "Oh, be quiet! Janet, put some more wood on the fire ready for when we've done, and we'll have the candle out." "It'll be time for you to go home." "There's the dream to tell."