it till it's dusk. Well! all the better:
they'll have more time to get safe away."

The pronouns did not refer to the same persons, but Haldane made no
attempt to specify them.

She sat still after that, nodding at intervals, and she was almost
asleep when the thing that she had feared came upon her. A low sound,
like and yet unlike the noise of distant thunder, broke upon her ear.
She sat up, wide awake in a moment.

"They're coming! Good Lord, help me through! Don't let it be very bad
to bear, and don't let it be long!"

Ten minutes had not passed when the hut was surrounded by a crowd. An
angry crowd, armed with sticks, pitchforks, or anything that could be
turned into a weapon--an abusive crowd, from whose lips words of hate
and scorn were pouring, mixed with profaner language.

"Pull the witch out! Stone her! drown her! burn her!" echoed on all
sides.

"Good Lord, don't let them burn me!" said poor old Haldane, inside the
hut. "I'd rather be drowned, if Thou dost not mind."

Did the good Lord not mind what became of the helpless old creature,
who, in her ignorance and misery, was putting her trust in Him? It
looked like it, as the mob broke open the frail door, and roughly hauled
out the frailer occupant of the wretched hut.

"Burn her!" The cry was renewed: and it came from one of the two
persons most prominent in the mob--that handsome girl to whom Haldane
had refused the revenge she coveted upon Brichtiva.

"Nay!" said the other, who was the Bishop's sumner, "that would be
irregular. Burning's for heretics. Tie her hands and feet together,
and cast her into the pond: that's the proper way to serve witches."

The rough boys among the crowd, to whom the whole scene was sport--and
though we have become more civilised in some ways as time has passed,
sport has retained much of its original savagery even now--gleefully
tied together Haldane's hands and feet, and carried her, thus secured,
to a large deep pond about a hundred yards from her abode.

This was the authorised test for a witch. If she sank and was drowned,
she was innocent of the charge of witchcraft; if she swam on the
surface, she was guilty, and liable to the legal penalty for her crime.
Either way, in nine out of ten cases, the end was death: for very few
thought of troubling themselves to save one who proved her innocence
after this fashion. [Note 2.]

The boys, having thus bound the poor old woman into a ball, lifted her
u