So they went back to their wives; and their wives, recollecting that the cottage formed part of the glebe, went off to inquire of Parson Morth, “than whom,” as the tablet to his memory relates, “none was better to castigate the manners of the age.”  He was a burly, hard-riding ruffian, and the tale of his great fight with Gipsy Ben in Launceston streets is yet told on the countryside.

Parson Morth wanted to know if he couldn’t let his cottage to an invalid lady and her sister without consulting every wash-mouth in the parish.

“Aw, so there’s two!” said one of them, nodding her head.  “But tell us, Parson dear, ef ’tes fitty for two unmated women to come trapesing down in a po’shay at dead o’ night, when all modest flesh be in their bed-gowns?”

Upon this the Parson’s language became grossly indelicate, after the fashion of those days.  He closed his peroration by slamming the front door on his visitors; and they went down the hill “blushing” (as they said) “all over, at his intimate words.”

So nothing more was known of the strangers.  But it was noticed that Parson Morth, when he passed the cottage on his way to meet or market, would pull up his mare, and, if the outlandish lady were working in the garden, would doff his hat respectfully.

“Bon jour, Mdmzelle Henriette”—­this was all the French the Parson knew.  And the lady would smile back and answer in English.

“Good-morning, Parson Morth.”

“And Mamzelle Lucille?”

“Ah, just the same, my God!  All the day stare—­stare.  If you had known her before!—­so be-eautiful, so gifted, si bien elevee! It is an affliction:  but I think she loves the flowers.”

And the Parson rode on with a lump in his throat.

So two years passed, during which Mademoiselle Henriette tilled her garden and turned it into a paradise.  There were white roses on the south wall, and in the beds mignonette and boy’s-love, pansies, carnations, gillyflowers, sweet-williams, and flaming great hollyhocks; above all, the yellow monkey-blossoms that throve so well in the marshy soil.  And all that while no one had caught so much as a glimpse of her sister, Lucille.  Also how they lived was a marvel.  The outlandish lady bought neither fish, nor butcher’s meat, nor bread.  To be sure, the Parson sent down a pint of milk every morning from his dairy; the can was left at the garden-gate and fetched at noon, when it was always found neatly scrubbed, with the price of the milk inside.  Besides, there was a plenty of vegetables in the garden.

But this was not enough to avert the whisper of witchcraft.  And one day, when Parson Morth had ridden off to the wrestling matches at Exeter, the blow fell.

Farmer Anthony of Carne—­great-grandfather of the present farmer—­had been losing sheep.  Now, not a man in the neighbourhood would own to having stolen them; so what so easy to suspect as witchcraft?  Who so fatally open to suspicion as the two outlandish sisters?  Men, wives, and children formed a procession.