Catherine Cavendish did more than assume such interest in me for her
own ends, for love, as I conceived it, was not thus.

I hastened on my way to Barry Upper Branch, where was the
rendezvous, and on my way had to pass the house where dwelt that
woman of strange repute, Margery Key, and it was naught but a
solidity of shadow beside the road except for a glimmer of white
from the breast of her cat in the doorway. But as I live, as I rode
past, a voice came from that house, though how she knew me in that
gloom I know not.

"Good speed to thee, Master Wingfield, and the fagots that thou
didst gather for the despised and poor shall turn into blessings,
like bars of silver. That which thou hast given, hast thou forever.
Go on and fear not, and strike for liberty, and no harm shall come
nigh thee." As she spoke I saw the bent back of the poor old crone
in the doorway beside her cat, and partly because of her blessing,
and partly because, as I said before, whether witch or not, she was
aged and feeble, and ill fitted for such work, I leapt from my
saddle and gathered her another armful of fagots, and laid them on
her hearth. I left the old soul shedding such tears of gratitude
over that slight service and calling down such childish blessings
upon my head that I began to have little doubt that she was no
witch, but only a poor and solitary old woman, which to my mind is
the forlornest state of humanity. How a man fares without those of
his own flesh and blood I can understand, since a man must needs
have some comfort in his own endurance of hardships, but what a
woman can do without chick or child, and no solace in her own
dependency, I know not. Verily I know not that such be to blame if
they turn to Satan himself for a protector, as they suspected
Margery Key of doing.

I rode away from Margery Key's, having been delayed but a moment,
and the quaver of her blessings was yet in my ears, when verily I
did see that which I have never understood. As I live, there passed
from the house of that ne'er-do-well next door, which was closed
tightly as if to assure folk that all therein were sound asleep, a
bright light like a torch, but no man carried it, and it crossed the
road and was away over the meadows, and no man whom I saw carried
it, and it waved in the wind like a torch streaming back, and I knew
it for a corpse candle. And that same night the man who dwelt in
that house was slain while pulling up the tobacco plants.