ngling to the heat, snuggles close. He is glad Mother speaks sharply
and is outdone about it; somehow this makes it more reassuring.

"Witched!" says Mother. "Tell me! 'Tis lingering in the lane after dark
with that gawky country sweetheart has given her the fever that her
betters have been having since the Avon come over bank. A wet autumn is
more to be feared than Gammer's witches. Poor luck it is the lubberfolk
aren't after the girl in truth; a slattern maid she is, her hearth
unswept and house-door always open and the cream ever a-chill. The
brownie-folk, I promise you, Will, pinch black and blue for less."

Mother is laughing at him. Little Will recognizes that and smiles back,
but half-heartedly, for he is not through confessing.

"I don't like to wear it down my back," says he. "It tickles."

"Wear what?" asks Mother, but even as she speaks must partly divine,
for a finger and thumb go searching down between his little nape and the
collar of his doublet, and in a moment they draw it forth, a bit of
witches' elm.

"Gammer, she sewed it there," says Will.

A little frown was gathering between Mother's brows, which was making
small Willy Shakespeare feel still more reassured and comfortable, when
suddenly she gave a cry and start, half rising, so that he, startled
too, slid perforce to the floor, clinging to her gown.

Whereupon Mother sank back in her chair, her hand pressed against the
kerchief crossed over her bosom, and laughed shamefacedly, for it had
been nothing more terrible that had startled her than big, purring
Graymalkin, the cat, insinuating his sleek back under her hand as he
arched and rubbed about her chair. And so, sitting down shamefacedly,
she gathered Will up again and called him goose and little chuck, as if
he and not she had been the one to jump and cry out.

But he laughed boisterously. The joke was on Mother, and so he laughed
loud, as becomes a man when the joke is on the women folk.

"Ho!" said Will Shakespeare.

"Sh-h-h!" said Mother.

But the mischief was done and Will must get out of her lap, for little
Brother Gilbert, awakened, was whimpering in the cradle.

Will clambered up on the settle to think it all over. Mother had started
and cried out. So after all was Mother afraid too? Of--of things? Had
she said it all to reassure him? The magpie had flown screaming over the
house for he had seen it. So what if the rest were true--that the cat,
the cat without the tail stealin