keeper of a tippling
house whose custom had dwindled, the ferryman whose child had peaked and
pined and died, came with a score of men to reckon with the witch who had
done the mischief. Finding door and window fast shut, they knocked, softly
at first, then loudly and with threats. One watched the chimney, to see
that the witch did not ride forth that way; and the father of the child
wished to gather brush, pile it against the entrance, and set all afire.
The miller, who was a man of strength, ended the matter by breaking in the
door. They knew that the witch was there, because they had heard her
moving about, and, when the door gave, a cry of affright. When, however,
they had laid hands upon her, and dragged her out under the stars, into
the light of the torches they carried, they found that the witch, who, as
was well known, could slip her shape as a snake slips its skin, was no
longer old and bowed, but straight and young.

"Let me go!" cried Audrey. "How dare you hold me! I never harmed one of
you. I am a poor girl come from a long way off"--

"Ay, a long way!" exclaimed the ferryman. "More leagues, I'll warrant,
than there are miles in Virginia! We'll see if ye can swim home, ye
witch!"

"I'm no witch!" cried the girl again. "I never harmed you. Let me go!"

One of the torchbearers gave ground a little. "She do look mortal young.
But where be the witch, then?"

Audrey strove to shake herself free. "The old woman left me alone in the
house. She went to--to the northward."

"She lies!" cried the ferryman, addressing himself to the angry throng.
The torches, flaming in the night wind, gave forth a streaming, uncertain,
and bewildering light; to the excited imaginations of the rustic avengers,
the form in the midst of them was not always that of a young girl, but now
and again wavered toward the semblance of the hag who had wrought them
evil. "Before the child died he talked forever of somebody young and fair
that came and stood by him when he slept. We thought 't was his dead
mother, but now--now I see who 't was!" Seizing the girl by the wrists, he
burst with her through the crowd. "Let the water touch her, she'll turn
witch again!"

The excited throng, blinded by its own imagination, took up the cry. The
girl's voice was drowned; she set her lips, and strove dumbly with her
captors; but they swept her through the weed-grown garden and broken gate,
past the cedars that were so ragged and black, down to the co