er apron over her head, as a priest uses to do his amice when
he is going to sing mass, and with a kind of antique, gaudy, party-coloured
string knit it under her neck. Being thus covered and muffled, she whiffed
off a lusty good draught out of the borachio, took three several pence
forth of the ramcod fob, put them into so many walnut-shells, which she set
down upon the bottom of a feather-pot, and then, after she had given them
three whisks of a broom besom athwart the chimney, casting into the fire
half a bavin of long heather, together with a branch of dry laurel, she
observed with a very hush and coy silence in what form they did burn, and
saw that, although they were in a flame, they made no kind of noise or
crackling din. Hereupon she gave a most hideous and horribly dreadful
shout, muttering betwixt her teeth some few barbarous words of a strange
termination.

This so terrified Panurge that he forthwith said to Epistemon, The devil
mince me into a gallimaufry if I do not tremble for fear! I do not think
but that I am now enchanted; for she uttereth not her voice in the terms of
any Christian language. O look, I pray you, how she seemeth unto me to be
by three full spans higher than she was when she began to hood herself with
her apron. What meaneth this restless wagging of her slouchy chaps? What
can be the signification of the uneven shrugging of her hulchy shoulders?
To what end doth she quaver with her lips, like a monkey in the
dismembering of a lobster? My ears through horror glow; ah! how they
tingle! I think I hear the shrieking of Proserpina; the devils are
breaking loose to be all here. O the foul, ugly, and deformed beasts! Let
us run away! By the hook of God, I am like to die for fear! I do not love
the devils; they vex me, and are unpleasant fellows. Now let us fly, and
betake us to our heels. Farewell, gammer; thanks and gramercy for your
goods! I will not marry; no, believe me, I will not. I fairly quit my
interest therein, and totally abandon and renounce it from this time
forward, even as much as at present. With this, as he endeavoured to make
an escape out of the room, the old crone did anticipate his flight and make
him stop. The way how she prevented him was this: whilst in her hand she
held the spindle, she flung out to a back-yard close by her lodge, where,
after she had peeled off the barks of an old sycamore three several times,
she very summarily, upon eight leaves which