eeting
Mary. So in a few minutes I was in the saddle and riding toward
Jamestown. The night was very bright with the moon, and there was a
great mist rising from the marshy lands, and such strangely pale and
luminous developments in the distances of the meadows, marshalling
and advancing and retreating, like companies of spectres, and
lingering as if for consultation on the borders of the woods, with
floating draperies caught in the boughs thereof, that one might have
considered danger from others than Indians. And, indeed, I often
caught the note of an owl, and once one flitted past my face and my
horse shied at the evil bird, which is thought by the ignorant to be
but a feathered cat and of ill omen, and indeed is considered by
many who are wise to have presaged ill oftentimes, as in the cases
of the deaths of the emperors Valentinian and Commodus. Be that as
it may, I, having a pistol with me, shot at the bird, and, though I
was as good a shot as any thereabouts, missed, and away it flew,
with a great hoot as of laughter, which I am ready to swear I heard
multiplied in a trice, as if the bird were joined by a whole
company, and my horse shied again and would have bolted had I not
held him tightly. Now, this which I am about to relate I am ready to
swear did truly happen, though it may well be doubted. I had come
within a short distance of Jamestown when I reached two houses of a
small size, not far apart, not much removed from the fashion of the
negro cabins, but inhabited by English folk. In the one dwelt a man
who had been transported for a grievous crime, whether justly or not
I cannot say, but his visage was such as to condemn him, and he was
often in his cups and had spent many days in the stocks, and had
made frequent acquaintance with the whipping-post, and with him
dwelt his wife, an old dame with a tongue which had once earned her
the ducking-stool in England. As I passed this house I saw over the
door a great bunch of dill and vervain and white thorn, which is
held to keep away witches from the threshold if gathered upon a May
day. And I knew well the reason, for not many rods distant was the
hut where dwelt one Margery Key, an ancient woman, who had been
verily tied crosswise and thrown in a pond for witchcraft and been
weighed against the church Bible, and had her body searched for
witch-marks and the thatch of her house burned. I know not why she
had not come to the stake withal, but instead she had fled