Читать книгу Ye Lyttle Salem Maide. A Story of Witchcraft онлайн

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“Quick I got a tallow dip and lighted it for to see what was in the crib. I fell on my knees and prayed. The witches had brought back my bairn, and taken their fretting wean away.”

“How looked it?” asked Deliverance, eagerly. She never wearied hearing of the changeling, and her interest was as fresh at the third telling of the story as at the first. And, although under most circumstances she would have been chidden for speaking out before her elders, she escaped this time, so interested were the goodwives in the tale.

“Full peaked and wan it looked,” answered the young wife, solemnly, “and blue it was from hunger and cold, for no witches’ food will nourish a baptized child.”

“I should have liked to see where the witches took it, shouldn’t ye?” whispered Abigail to Deliverance.

“Abigail,” said Deliverance, in a cautious whisper, although the humming of the spinning-wheel almost drowned her voice, “if ye will be pleasant-mouthed and not run tittle-tattling upon me again, perchance I will tell ye summat, only it would make your eyes pop out o’ your head. Ye be that simple-minded, Abigail! And I might show ye summat too, only I misdoubt ye have a carnal heart which longs too much on things that glitter. Here, ye can bite off the end o’ my sugar-plum. Now, whisper no word o’ what I tell ye,” putting her mouth to the other’s ear, “I be on a service for his majesty, King George.”