hysician clustered about staring at the house which stood locked and
blank of response. At night fire-shine was seen from an upper room; some
declared they heard wild, melodious laughter.

On the third day Sir Austin died. A stern-faced deputation of men went
to the house of the late clergymen. They found the door unlatched and
open to their entrance. In the upper room they found Mistress Michell
seated before her hearth where a dying fire fell to embers, her hair
"flowing down in grate bewty."

"What have I to do with Sir Austin, or he with me?" she calmly asked the
men who gaped upon her. "How should I have harmed him, who came not near
him, as ye know? Bury him, and leave me in peace."

If she had been aged and ugly, she might have been hung. Gossip ran rife
through the countryside. But indignation was strong against the man who
had jilted the local beauty, there existed no proof of harm done, and
the matter slept for a time.

New matters came. A horror grew up around the house. The girl was seen
flitting across the fields at dawn, a monstrous shadow following. Her
voice was heard from the room where she locked herself alone, raised in
unknown speech. Strange lights moved in her windows in the deep night.
The old woman who had served in the house for years was stricken with a
palsy and was taken away mumbling unintelligible things that iced the
blood of superstitious hearers.

There was a young man of the neighborhood whose love for Mistress
Michell had been long and constant. One morning he was found dead on her
doorstep, his face fixed in drawn terror. Under his hand four words were
scrawled in the snow: "_Sara daughter of Ruel----_"

There were those who could finish that quotation. Next Sabbath the new
minister took as his text: "Ye shall not suffer a witch to live." And he
spoke of Sara the daughter of Ruel, who was wed to ten bridegrooms, each
of whom was dead on the wedding eve; for she was beloved by an evil
spirit that suffered none to come to her. Authority moved at last
against Desire Michell. But when the officers came to arrest her, she
was found dead in her favorite seat before the hearth.

"Fair and upright in her place, scented with a perfume she herself
distilled of her learning in such matters; which was said to contain a
rare herb of Jerusalem called Lady's Rose, resembling spikenard, with
vervain and cedar and secret simples; in which she steeped her hair so
that wherever she abode were swe