Noughts and Crosses | Page 6

enough to avert the whisper of witchcraft. And one
day, when Parson Morth had ridden off to the wrestling matches at
Exeter, the blow fell.
Farmer Anthony of Carne--great-grandfather of the present farmer--had
been losing sheep. Now, not a man in the neighbourhood would own to
having stolen them; so what so easy to suspect as witchcraft? Who so
fatally open to suspicion as the two outlandish sisters? Men, wives, and
children formed a procession.
The month was July; and Mademoiselle Henriette was out in the garden,
a bunch of monkey-flowers in her hand, when they arrived. She turned
all white, and began to tremble like a leaf. But when the spokesman
stated the charge, there was another tale.
"It was an infamy. Steal! She would have them know that she and her
sister were of good West Indian family--tres bien elevees." Then
followed a torrent of epithets. They were laches-poltrons. Why were
they not fighting Bonaparte, instead of sending their wives up to the
cliffs, dressed in red cloaks, to scare him away, while they bullied weak
women?
They pushed past her. The cottage held two rooms on the ground floor.
In the kitchen, which they searched first, they found only some
garden-stuff and a few snails salted in a pan. There was a door leading
to the inner room, and the foremost had his hand on it, when
Mademoiselle Henriette rushed before him, and flung herself at his feet.
The yellow monkey-blossoms were scattered and trampled on the floor.

"Ah--non, non, messieurs! Je vous prie--Elle est si--si horrible!"
They flung her down, and pushed on.
The invalid sister lay in an arm-chair with her back to the doorway, a
bunch of monkey-flowers beside her. As they burst in, she started, laid
both hands on the arms of her chair, and turned her face slowly upon
them.
She was a leper!
They gave one look at that featureless face, with the white scales
shining upon it, and ran back with their arms lifted before their eyes.
One woman screamed. Then a dead stillness fell on the place, and the
cottage was empty.
On the following Saturday Parson Morth walked down to the inn, just
ten minutes after stalling his mare. He strode into the tap-room in his
muddy boots, took two men by the neck, knocked their skulls together,
and then demanded to hear the truth.
"Very well," he said, on hearing the tale; "to-morrow I march every
man Jack of you up to the valley, if it's by the scruff of your necks, and
in the presence of both of those ladies--of both, mark you--you shall
kneel down and ask them to come to church. I don't care if I empty the
building. Your fathers (who were men, not curs) built the south transept
for those same poor souls, and cut a slice in the chancel arch through
which they might see the Host lifted. That's where you sit, Jim Trestrail,
churchwarden; and by the Lord Harry, they shall have your pew."
He marched them up the very next morning. He knocked, but no one
answered. After waiting a while, he put his shoulder against the door,
and forced it in.
There was no one in the kitchen. In the inner room one sister sat in the
arm-chair. It was Mademoiselle Henriette, cold and stiff. Her dead
hands were stained with earth.

At the back of the cottage they came on a freshly-formed mound, and
stuck on the top of it a piece of slate, such as children erect over a
thrush's grave.
On it was scratched--
Ci-Git Lucille, Jadis si Belle; Dont dix-neuf Jeunes Hommes, Planteurs
de Saint Domingue. ont demande la Main. Mais La Petite ne Voulait
Pas. R.I.P.
This is the story of Loose-heels, otherwise Lucille's.

STATEMENT OF GABRIEL FOOT, HIGHWAYMAN.
The jury re-entered the court after half an hour's consultation.
It all comes back to me as vividly as though I stood in the dock at this
very moment. The dense fog that hung over the well of the court; the
barristers' wigs that bobbed up through it, and were drowned again in
that seething cauldron; the rays of the guttering candles (for the
murder-trial had lasted far into the evening) that loomed through it and
wore a sickly halo; the red robes and red face of my lord judge opposite
that stared through it and outshone the candles; the black crowd around,
seen mistily; the voice of the usher calling "Silence!"; the shuffling of
the jurymen's feet; the pallor on their faces as I leant forward and tried
to read the verdict on them; the very smell of the place, compounded of
fog, gaol-fever, the close air, and the dinners eaten earlier in the day by
the crowd--all this strikes home upon me as