Page:The Dial (Volume 73).djvu/577

Rh I would be slow to believe her father's daughter a witch.


 * Have you ever seen the Queen, countryman?


 * No.


 * Nor has any one else. Not a man here has set eyes on her. For seven years she has been shut up in that great black house on the great rocky hill. From the day her father died she has been there with the doors shut on her, but we know now why she has hidden herself. She has no good companions in the dark night.


 * In my district they say that she is a holy woman and prays for us all.


 * That story has been spread about by the Prime Minister. He has spies everywhere spreading stories. He is a crafty man.


 * It is true, they always deceive us country people. We are not educated like the people of the town.


 * The Bible says, suffer not a witch to live. Last Candlemas twelvemonth I strangled a witch with my own hands.


 * When she is dead we will make the Prime Minister King.

No, no, he is not a king's son.

I'd send a bellman through the world. There are many kings in Arabia, they say.


 * The people must be talking. If you and I were to hide ourselves, or to be someway hard to understand, maybe they would put some bad name on us. I am not against the people, but I want testimony.


 * Come, Tapster, stand up there on the stone and tell what you know.

(The Tapster climbs up on the mounting-stone.)

I live in the quarter where her Castle is. The garden of my house and the gardens of all the houses in my row run right up to the rocky hill that has her Castle on the top. There is a lad in my quarter that has a goat in his garden.

That's Strolling Michael—I know him.

That goat is always going astray. Strolling Michael got out of his bed early one morning to go snaring birds, and nowhere could he see that goat. So he began climbing up the rock, and up and up he went, till he was close under the wall, and there he found the goat and it shaking and sweating as though something had scared it. Presently he heard a thing neigh like a horse, and after that a something like a white horse ran by, but it was no horse, but a unicorn. He had his pistol, for he had thought to bring down a rabbit, and seeing it rushing at him as he imagined, he fired at the unicorn. It vanished all in a moment, but there was blood on a great stone.

Seeing what company she keeps in the small hours, what wonder that she never sets foot out of doors.


 * I wouldn't believe all that night rambler says—boys are liars. All that we have against her for certain is that she won't put her foot out of doors. I knew a man once that when he was five and twenty refused to get out of his bed. He wasn't ill—no, not he, but he said life was a vale of tears, and for forty and four years till they carried