to
Virginia, where, witches being not so common, were treated with more
leniency. It may have been that she had escaped the usual fate of
those of her kind by being considered by some a white witch, and one
who worked good instead of ill if approached rightly, though many
considered that they who approached a white witch for the purpose of
profiting by her advice or warning, were of equal guilt, and that it
all led in the end to mischief. Be that as it may, this old dame
Margery Key dwelt there alone in her little hut so over-thatched and
grown by vines, and scarce showing the shaggy slant of its roof
above the bushes, that it resembled more the hole of some timid and
wary animal than a human habitation. And if any visited her for
consultation it was by night and secretly, and no one ever caught
sight of her except now and then the nodding white frill of her cap
in the green gloom of a window or the painful bend of her old back
as she gathered sticks for her fire in the woods about. How she
lived none knew. A little garden-patch she had, and a hive or two of
bees, and a red cow, which many affirmed to have the eye of a demon,
and there were those who said that her familiars stole bread for her
from the plantation larders, and that often a prime ham was missed
and a cut of venison, with no explanation, but who can say? Without
doubt there are strange things in the earth, but we are all so in
the midst of them, and even a part of their workings, that we can
have no outside foothold to take fair sight thereof. Verily a man
might as well strive to lift himself by his boot-straps over a
stile.

But this much I will say, that, as I was riding along, cogitating
something deeply in my mind as to the best disposal of the powder
and the shot which Mary Cavendish had ordered from England, I,
coming abreast of Margery Key's house, saw of a sudden a white cat,
which many affirmed to be her familiar, spring from her door like a
white arrow of speed and off down a wood-path, and my horse reared
and plunged, and then, with my holding him of no avail, though I had
a strong hand on the bridle, was after her with such a mad flight
that I had hard work to keep the saddle. Pell-mell through the wood
we went, I ducking my head before the mad lash of the branches and
feeling the dew therefrom in my face like a drive of rain, until we
came to a cleared space, then a great spread of tobacco fields,
overlapping silver-white in the moonlight,