Late that afternoon she came upon two or three rude dwellings clustered about a mill.  A knot of men, the miller in the midst, stood and gazed at the mill-stream.  They wore an angry look; and Audrey passed them hastily by.  At the farthest house she paused to beg a piece of bread; but the woman who came to the door frowned and roughly bade her begone, and a child threw a stone at her.  “One witch is enough to take the bread out of poor folks’ mouths!” cried the woman.  “Be off, or I’ll set the dogs on ye!” The children ran after her as she hastened from the inhospitable neighborhood. “’T is a young witch,” they cried, “going to help the old one swim to-night!” and a stone struck her, bruising her shoulder.

She began to run, and, fleet of foot as she was, soon distanced her tormentors.  When she slackened pace it was sunset, and she was faint with hunger and desperately weary.  From the road a bypath led to a small clearing in a wood, with a slender spiral of smoke showing between the trees.  Audrey went that way, and came upon a crazy cabin whose door and window were fast closed.  In the unkempt garden rose an apple-tree, with the red apples shriveling upon its boughs, and from the broken gate a line of cedars, black and ragged, ran down to a piece of water, here ghastly pale, there streaked like the sky above with angry crimson.  The place was very still, and the air felt cold.  When no answer came to her first knocking, Audrey beat upon the door; for she was suddenly afraid of the road behind her, and of the doleful woods and the coming night.

The window shutter creaked ever so slightly, and some one looked out; then the door opened, and a very old and wrinkled woman, with lines of cunning about her mouth, laid her hand upon the girl’s arm.  “Who be ye?” she whispered.  “Did ye bring warning?  I don’t say, mind ye, that I can’t make a stream go dry,—­maybe I can and maybe I can’t,—­but I didn’t put a word on the one yonder.”  She threw up her arms with a wailing cry.  “But they won’t believe what a poor old soul says!  Are they in an evil temper, honey?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Audrey.  “I have come a long way, and I am hungry and tired.  Give me a piece of bread, and let me stay with you to-night.”

The old woman moved aside, and the girl, entering a room that was mean and poor enough, sat down upon a stool beside the fire.  “If ye came by the mill,” demanded her hostess, with a suspicious eye, “why did ye not stop there for bite and sup?”

“The men were all talking together,” answered Audrey wearily.  “They looked so angry that I was afraid of them.  I did stop at one house; but the woman bade me begone, and the children threw stones at me and called me a witch.”

The crone stooped and stirred the fire; then from a cupboard brought forth bread and a little red wine, and set them before the girl.  “They called you a witch, did they?” she mumbled as she went to and fro.  “And the men were talking and planning together?”