About noon of the day of Mr Croft’s accident, Uncle Isham had occasion to go to the cabin of the venerable Aunt Patsy, and, of course he told her what had happened to the gentleman whom he and Aunt Patsy still supposed to be Miss Annie’s husband.  The news produced a very marked effect upon the old woman.  She put down the crazy quilt, upon the unfinished corner of which she was making a few feeble stitches, and looked at Uncle Isham with a troubled frown.  She was certain that this was the work of old Mrs Keswick, who had succeeded, at last, in conjuring the young husband; and the charm she had given him, and upon which she had relied to avert the ill will of “ole miss,” had proved unavailing.  The conjuring had been accomplished so craftily and slyly, the bewitched plank in one place, and Mrs Keswick far off in another, that there had been no chance to use the counteracting charm.  And yet Aunt Patsy had thought it a good charm, a very good one indeed.

Early in her married life Mrs Keswick had been the mother of a little girl.  It had died when it was very small, and it was the only child she ever had.  Of this infant she preserved, as a memento, a complete suit of its clothes, which she regarded with a feeling almost religious.  Years ago, however, Aunt Patsy, in order to protect herself against the conjuring powers of the mistress of the house, in which she then served as a sort of supervising cook, had possessed herself of the shoes belonging to the cherished suit of clothes.  She knew the sacred light in which they were regarded by their owner, and she felt quite sure that if “ole miss” ever attempted, in one of her fits of anger, to exercise her power of limb twisting or back contortion upon her, that the sight of those little blue shoes would create a revulsion of feeling, and, as she put it to herself, “stop her mighty short.”  The shoes had never been missed, for the box containing the suit was only opened on one day of the year, and then all the old lady could endure was a peep at the little white frock which covered the rest of the contents; and Aunt Patsy well knew that the sight of those little blue shoes would be to her mistress like two little feet coming back from the grave.

Patsy had been much too old to act as nurse to the infant, Annie Peyton, then regarded as the daughter of the house, but she had always felt for the child the deepest affection; and now that she herself was so near the end of her career that she had little fear of being bewitched, she was willing to give up the safeguards she had so long possessed, in order that they might protect the man whom Miss Annie had loved and married.  But they had failed, or rather it had been impossible to use them, and Miss Annie’s husband had been stricken down.  “It’s pow’ful hard to git roun’ ole miss,” she groaned.  “She too much fur ole folks like I is.”