Audrey ate the bread and drank the wine; then, because she was so tired, leaned her head against the table and fell half asleep.  When she roused herself, it was to find her withered hostess standing over her with a sly and toothless smile.  “I’ve been thinking,” she whispered, “that since you’re here to mind the house, I’ll just step out to a neighbor’s about some business I have in hand.  You can stay by the fire, honey, and be warm and comfortable.  Maybe I’ll not come back to-night.”

Going to the window, she dropped a heavy bar across the shutter.  “Ye’ll put the chain across the door when I’m out,” she commanded.  “There be evil-disposed folk may want to win in.”  Coming back to the girl, she laid a skinny hand upon her arm.  Whether with palsy or with fright the hand shook like a leaf, but Audrey, half asleep again, noticed little beyond the fact that the fire warmed her, and that here at last was rest.  “If there should come a knocking and a calling, honey,” whispered the witch, “don’t ye answer to it or unbar the door.  Ye’ll save time for me that way.  But if they win in, tell them I went to the northward.”

Audrey looked at her with glazed, uncomprehending eyes, while the gnome-like figure appeared to grow smaller, to melt out of the doorway.  It was a minute or more before the wayfarer thus left alone in the hut could remember that she had been told to bar the door.  Then her instinct of obedience sent her to the threshold.  Dusk was falling, and the waters of the pool lay pale and still beyond the ebony cedars.  Through the twilit landscape moved the crone who had housed her for the night; but she went not to the north, but southwards toward the river.  Presently the dusk swallowed her up, and Audrey was left with the ragged garden and the broken fence and the tiny firelit hut.  Reentering the room, she fastened the door, as she had been told to do, and then went back to the hearth.  The fire blazed and the shadows danced; it was far better than last night, out in the cold, lying upon dead leaves, watching the falling stars.  Here it was warm, warm as June in a walled garden; the fire was red like the roses ... the roses that had thorns to bring heart’s blood.

Audrey fell fast asleep; and while she was asleep and the night was yet young, the miller whose mill stream had run dry, the keeper of a tippling house whose custom had dwindled, the ferryman whose child had peaked and pined and died, came with a score of men to reckon with the witch who had done the mischief.  Finding door and window fast shut, they knocked, softly at first, then loudly and with threats.  One watched the chimney, to see that the witch did not ride forth that way; and the father of the child wished to gather brush, pile it against the entrance, and set all afire.  The miller, who was a man of strength, ended the matter by breaking in the door.  They knew that the witch was there, because they had heard her moving about, and, when the door gave, a cry of affright.  When, however, they had laid hands upon her, and dragged her out under the stars, into the light of the torches they carried, they found that the witch, who, as was well known, could slip her shape as a snake slips its skin, was no longer old and bowed, but straight and young.