w a stone at her. "One witch is enough to take the bread out of
poor folks' mouths!" cried the woman. "Be off, or I'll set the dogs on
ye!" The children ran after her as she hastened from the inhospitable
neighborhood. "'T is a young witch," they cried, "going to help the old
one swim to-night!" and a stone struck her, bruising her shoulder.

She began to run, and, fleet of foot as she was, soon distanced her
tormentors. When she slackened pace it was sunset, and she was faint with
hunger and desperately weary. From the road a bypath led to a small
clearing in a wood, with a slender spiral of smoke showing between the
trees. Audrey went that way, and came upon a crazy cabin whose door and
window were fast closed. In the unkempt garden rose an apple-tree, with
the red apples shriveling upon its boughs, and from the broken gate a line
of cedars, black and ragged, ran down to a piece of water, here ghastly
pale, there streaked like the sky above with angry crimson. The place was
very still, and the air felt cold. When no answer came to her first
knocking, Audrey beat upon the door; for she was suddenly afraid of the
road behind her, and of the doleful woods and the coming night.

The window shutter creaked ever so slightly, and some one looked out; then
the door opened, and a very old and wrinkled woman, with lines of cunning
about her mouth, laid her hand upon the girl's arm. "Who be ye?" she
whispered. "Did ye bring warning? I don't say, mind ye, that I can't make
a stream go dry,--maybe I can and maybe I can't,--but I didn't put a word
on the one yonder." She threw up her arms with a wailing cry. "But they
won't believe what a poor old soul says! Are they in an evil temper,
honey?"

"I don't know what you mean," said Audrey. "I have come a long way, and I
am hungry and tired. Give me a piece of bread, and let me stay with you
to-night."

The old woman moved aside, and the girl, entering a room that was mean and
poor enough, sat down upon a stool beside the fire. "If ye came by the
mill," demanded her hostess, with a suspicious eye, "why did ye not stop
there for bite and sup?"

"The men were all talking together," answered Audrey wearily. "They looked
so angry that I was afraid of them. I did stop at one house; but the woman
bade me begone, and the children threw stones at me and called me a
witch."

The crone stooped and stirred the fire; then from a cupboard brought forth
bread and a little red wine, and set the