This confession was followed by laughter, in which most joined; and, except the clerk of the parish and the balked witch-finder, all dispersed in such good humour, that the poor old crone was released from her hurdle and her troublesome attendants, and, with a basket of broken meat and a bottle of ale, was suffered to hobble back to her hovel in the sand pit, without let or hinderance. It is true that Margery was most justly liable to the charge of imposture in the matter of Jock; and certain that, but for the easy and kind temper of the knight, and the good humour which her own quaint and jocular confession suddenly struck out of the wayward crowd, she might have been committed by Sir Oliver, or half drowned by the brutal and superstitious rustics on her road back to her miserable hovel. But as she lived at a lone spot on the far side of the Avon, and was not often seen in the parish of Milverton, and as the good knight (though by no means free from the prevalent belief in witchcraft, and still doubting whether under the form of a mouse she was not attended by an imp, as the witch-finder had averred,) was a timid magistrate, hated trouble, and sincerely feared doing what was either wrong in law or severe in punishment, he rejoiced to be well quit of the troublesome appeal. Nevertheless, he was not a little secretly disturbed, when, late in the evening, old Philip—in a fear which had not even yielded to the comforting warmth of a cup of spiced ale—related to him his comical dream, with manifold exaggerations, and expressed his stout belief that he had been possessed during his sleep by the evil influence of old Margery.

Truth to say, at the period of which we write such was the fear and hatred of those forlorn and miserable old women, whose unsightly features, infirm gait, and cross tempers, excited among their neighbours any suspicion that they held intercourse with evil spirits, and exercised the powers of witchcraft, as drove forth the unhappy beings to lonely abodes in solitary places. Here again, in the vicinity of some village, remote from the scene of their persecution, their very loneliness, all compelled and oppressive as it was, did most naturally subject them anew to the suspicions of fresh oppressors. So bloody, too, were the laws which at that time disgraced the statute book, having for their end the punishment of witchcraft, so cruel were the modes of trial among the mean and malignant persons who drove a lucrative trade as witch-finders, and so credulous was the ignorant and easily abused multitude, that, upon evidence far less colourable with guilt than that adduced against Margery, unfortunate persons of both sexes were publicly executed without shame and without pity. In numberless instances false confessions were extorted from the hopeless sufferers by torture, and adduced upon the day of trial, or proclaimed at the place of execution. Thus a rooted persuasion of the existence of sorcery and the practices of witchcraft was fixed in the minds of the vulgar, and even infected those of the better and the educated classes. As a natural consequence of this terrible superstition, some of the poor creatures suspected of witchcraft, who found themselves thrust out of the pale of human sympathy—avoided and shunned by some, beaten and set upon by others—did madden, and mumble curses in their gloomy solitude, and at last began to suspect themselves as the servants of unseen spirits, and the partakers of a supernatural power.

In the breast of Cuthbert Noble the vulgar and cruel prejudice concerning witchcraft had no place. His humane and enlightened father had very early instilled into his mind clear notions of the love and care of the great Father of the human families; of the sacredness of human life, indeed of all life, and of the holiness of creation;—and he had, moreover, taught him to regard all particular cases of severe and inexplicable suffering as parts only of one vast and mysterious whole, and subserving, in the great end and issue, some wise, holy, wonderful purpose of divine and universal love. He had taught him, too, that ours was a marred and fallen nature; and how and by what means, and in whose divine person, it actually was restored; and how all the sons of Adam had become capable, through divine mercy, of partaking all the benefits of that restoration of man’s nature—in some degree even in this troubled and probationary state—in full and satisfying perfection in that state which is future and eternal. Hence, to the eye of Cuthbert, every one of human form was an object, though not perhaps of personal interest and affection, yet of wonder and of reverence, as a creature of God, born for immortality—an imperishable, an indestructible being; and, when the crimes and errors of his fellow-creatures stirred up his angry passions to punish and withstand them, the sense of his own weakness and his own sinfulness was ever waiting for him in his heart’s closet, to rebuke and humble him in the calmness of solitude. But Cuthbert as yet had been little tried; he knew not what spirit he was of. He thought that his placid and firm father was the model which he surely followed; but the settled and peaceful joy of that amiable and benevolent and subdued father was as yet unknown to him.

However, the character and the life of Parson Noble will be the better understood and conceived of by transporting our reader to the village in Somersetshire where he dwelt, and where, had it been her good fortune to have been a parishioner of his, old Margery, in spite of her wild and withered aspect, might have lived unmolested and in peace with her neighbours, and would not have lacked such acquaintance with the mercy of the great Redeemer, as it is in the power of a mere human instrument to impart.

CHAP. III.

The morning star glittered brightly above the fine old tower of Cheddar church, and the low parsonage lay still and asleep amid the flowers and the dewy grass plots of its pleasant garden, as advancing, from beneath the ancient yew in the churchyard, to the wicket opposite the good vicar’s porch, a party of hale young rustics with coloured ribands in their hats and on their loose white sleeves, planted, on either side the entrance, a fine branch of white thorn in full blossom, and struck up, with full and cheerful voices, the very ancient medley from which the stanzas at the head of our present chapter are taken. They had not sung two verses before the door of the parsonage was opened by a merry looking old serving man—two lasses’ heads were thrust from a window over the kitchen—the mistress’s good humoured eyes were seen over a white chamber blind,—and the parson himself, with a face as expressive of joy as a child’s, though marked with the furrows of seven-and-sixty years, came forth to the wicket in a loose morning gown, with a black scull-cap on his silvery hairs, and listened, with a motion of the lips, that showed