Free Mist Over Pendle by Robert Neill

Then out comes Dick Nutter here--and of what followed he may speak himself.”
    “And what says he?”
    Dick Nutter fidgeted unhappily as they all turned to him, but he did his best with the tale.
    “There’s little more to tell,” he said. “Richard’s lass screamed, and I ran out and saw it--just as Richard’s said. There was Harry on his face and the girl Alizon running like a mad thing.”
    “What of the Demdike?”
    “I heeded her nothing, nor she me. There was a gardener came out too, and a cowman, and between us we got Harry in--and a rare sweating job we had of it, with his weight and this ground. But we got him in and laid him as you saw.”
    “He still living?”
    “Aye, and twitching. Then I sent a lad to bid Richard come fetch his daughter, she being in no fit state to go alone.”
    “No doubt.” Roger seemed deep in thought. “And then?”
    But it was Richard Baldwin who took up the tale again, and there was a tremor in his voice now, as though he were deeply stirred.
    “I’d Dick’s message,” he said, “and I guessed poor Harry as good as dead. I bade the lad ride on to summon Wilsey, and I nigh foundered my horse getting down here. I prayed God as I rode that it might please Him to spare Harry Mitton. But it pleased Him not, and before I came the man was gone.”
    “Aye, gone he was.” Dick Nutter spoke again. “There was naught we could do. He lay there and snored, jerking and twitching, and his face red as a cornfield poppy. Betimes he tried to speak, or so it seemed, for we never kenned a word. And then, of a sudden, he was dead. And that’s all there’s to it.”
    “All?” Richard Baldwin’s voice rose passionately. “All, d’ye say? All?” He turned from Dick Nutter and spoke directly to Roger. “When I’d seen poor Harry dead and quiet, I came out here in great unease of spirit. And there on this hillside, not twenty roods away, were two damned witches squatting like gorged crows--Demdike and her squinting bastard.”
    “Who?” Wilsey spoke for the first time. “Which of them? Alizon? Or Squinting Lizzie?”
    “In human pity, tell us a plain tale!” Roger sounded exasperated. “I grow giddy between this brood of women. Whom do you speak of now?”
    Baldwin explained carefully, speaking clearly and with a slow patience.
    “There are but three to think of,” he said. “There’s Demdike, the old beldame who began the whole damned brood. There’s her daughter whom she names Elizabeth and who takes second name Device from a fool she says married her. And....“
    “Is that Squinting Lizzie?”
    “So Wilsey says. And surely she’s afflicted of the eyes....
    Beyond that, there’s the third generation, this whelp Alizon, who’s daughter to this Elizabeth Device and hence granddaughter to the Demdike.”
    “Yet first you said....“
    “I said that first there were Demdike and the whelp Alizon. And so there were. But the whelp ran off, and her mother must have took her place, for it was her I saw.”
    “The grandmother remaining? I see.” Roger’s face had the faintest of smiles. “Then the matter, as you see it, stands how?”
    “Is there need to say how?” Baldwin sounded impatient. “They’re known reputed witches, all of them. The whelp flings dung. Mitton makes at her, and the old one strikes him down. Then, her own power not sufficing, she calls Device, her daughter, to help make an end of him. Is it not enough?”
    Roger looked slowly round the circle from one to another, as though searching out their thoughts.
    “It would be enough,” he said quietly, “if I were sure that any power had struck him.”
    “If you were sure?” Richard Baldwin’s stern voice shook with fury. “What meaning has sure if this be not it?”
    Roger chose to answer him indirectly.
    “This Mitton,” he said, “to be more just than courteous, might be called stout of girth. And none so young. It’s ill work for such a one to run up hills in the sun.”
    “You doubt.