Chapter Four.

Dr Morgan gave no explanation of what had occurred till Charles and Anna had left the room. He then called his anxious and ever helpful wife to his side. “I much want your assistance, dearest Maria,” he said in a tone which showed the depressed state of his feelings; “I was summoned just now to visit a person in a most melancholy condition. You have heard of the forlorn old creature—Moggy, she is called by the country people—who lives in that wretched hovel we can see high up on the side of the mountain. She has been dreadfully burnt.”

The Doctor’s wife, ever ready with help and sympathy, in spite of the numerous maternal cares to which she had to attend, immediately exclaimed, “Poor old creature! I am sure that she much wants comforts. Shall I not at once send up some sheets and cotton wool? and is there anything else you can think of?”

“The comfort that is wanted, dear Maria, is nearer home,” answered the Doctor, taking his wife’s hand. “I have a sad story to tell you. On reaching Old Moggy’s hovel I found her with her hands and feet horribly burnt; so much so, that, should she survive, which I think it possible she may not, she will, I fear, never recover their use. I found that sturdy old Welshwoman, Jenny Davis, watching by her, and tending her with the care of a daughter. After I had dressed the poor creature’s burnt limbs, and done all I could to alleviate her sufferings, Jenny told me that when crossing the mountain that evening on her way home, and having nearly reached the bottom, she observed an unusual light streaming out of the window of Old Mountain Moggy’s hovel. Believing that the hut must be on fire, she hurried up towards it, though she feared that she should be too late to render any effectual assistance to its half-witted inmate. So indeed she would, had not another person most providentially arrived before her. On looking in at the window as she passed she saw a young gentleman—a tourist, she supposed—kneeling down by the side of the poor creature; his great-coat was off, he having with it extinguished the flames with which he said that he had found her almost surrounded. Happily, from the great number of under-garments she wore, only the outer rags had caught. He had been sitting on a rock above the hovel, and hearing a scream, and seeing a light break forth through a hole in the roof, he ran down, on the chance of something being wrong, and was undoubtedly the means of saving the poor creature from instant destruction. He and Jenny together lifted Moggy on to her straw bed, and in so doing a piece of burnt stick still smouldering fell out from among her clothes. This was evidently what had set her on fire, but how it had come there, was the question. Jenny was loud in her praise of the young gentleman. He was so gentle, and kind, and didn’t mind touching the dirty old creature, and helping to place her in an easy position. He took out his purse, and observing that he hadn’t much money, he gave her a handful of shillings, as he said, to help to pay the doctor and to buy her some proper food and clothing. Fortunately he saw a boy crossing the mountain, and running after him he gave him a shilling to go and call a doctor. The lad naturally came to me. The young gentleman would not tell Jenny his name, saying, ‘names don’t signify.’ He had to get back to his inn on the other side of the mountain, and as it was growing dark he could wait no longer; but, as Jenny said, ran off as fast as a deer up the steep, singing and jumping as merry as a lark. He told Jenny that, if he could, he would come back to learn how the poor old creature might be getting on, but that he feared he should be living too far off to reach her on foot. This account was, I own, like a gleam of sunshine, though it threw into a yet darker shade the sad account of an act of which I am compelled to tell you. Having dressed Old Moggy’s hurts, I observed several stones, some lying on the bed, and others scattered about the floor of the hut. A large one I especially remarked on the hearth, and which I had no doubt had struck the embers of the fire, and been the immediate cause of its bursting into a flame, and igniting the poor creature’s clothes. I asked Jenny if she could account for the stones being, as they were, scattered about in every direction; and she then gave me a history of a piece of barbarous cruelty, the result of a thoughtlessness and an amount of ignorance I should scarcely have expected in the actors. Jenny, though in most respects a true Welshwoman, is free from the ignorant superstition which forms so sad an ingredient in the character of the uneducated peasants of these mountain districts, and was grieved when she found that poor Old Moggy had become the victim of the gross superstition of her neighbours, by whom she is reputed to be a witch who has flown across the sea from distant parts for the purpose of taking possession of the wretched hovel on the mountain. ‘I do think, sir,’ said Jenny, ‘if the poor creature had had the power of flying, she’d have flown to a better sort of a place than this poor shed, scarcely fit to shelter a gipsy’s donkey from a snow-storm. When once the mind strays away from the truth, it’s impossible to say what follies it won’t believe. People don’t seem to see the foolishness and nonsense of their own stones. If they’d seen her, as I have, in her right mind, they’d know that a friend of the Evil One couldn’t talk as she talks; and as for flying, poor old creature! she can scarcely drag one foot after the other,’ Jenny Davis is a thoughtful and sensible woman, though her exterior is somewhat rough,” observed the Doctor, who was evidently unwilling, sooner than he could, to repeat the story he had heard. He continued, however: “Jenny gave little heed to these foolish stories, till one day one of her boys came from playing on the mountain-side, with a scared look, and almost breathless, saying that the witch had run after him, shrieking out, and uttering the most dreadful threats. On cross-questioning the child, she found that he did not actually see Moggy running after him, but that his companions said she was, while the shrieks and cries were the result of his imagination. She determined, however, to go and see the old woman herself. Being a woman of action, she immediately set off. When she got