Then, on a sudden, there came a great yell from poor Mrs. Nutter’s chamber, and they both stood up very pale.  The Widow Macan, with the cup in her hand that she was ‘tossing’ at the moment, and Moggy, all aghast, invoked a blessing under her breath, and they heard loud cries and sudden volleys of talk, and Biddy’s voice, soothing the patient.

Poor Mrs. Nutter had started up, all on a sudden, from her narcotic doze, with a hideous scream that had frightened the women down stairs.  Then she cried—­

‘Where am I?’ and ‘Oh, the witch—­the witch!’

‘Oh! no, Ma’am, dear,’ replied Betty; ‘now, aisy, Ma’am, darling.’

‘I’m going mad.’

’No, Ma’am, dear?—­there now—­sure ’tis poor Betty that’s in it—­don’t be afear’d, Ma’am.’

‘Oh, Betty, hold me—­don’t go—­I’m mad—­am I mad?’

Then in the midst of Betty’s consolations, she broke into a flood of tears, and seemed in some sort relieved; and Betty gave her her drops again, and she began to mumble to herself, and so to doze.

At the end of another ten minutes, with a scream, she started up again.

‘That’s her step—­where are you, Betty?’ she shrieked, and when Betty ran to the bedside, she held her so hard that the maid was ready to cry out, leering all the time over her shoulder—­’Where’s Charles Nutter?—­I saw him speaking to you.’

Then the poor little woman grew quieter, and by her looks and moans, and the clasping of her hands, and her upturned eyes, seemed to be praying; and when Betty stealthily opened the press to take out another candle, her poor mistress uttered another terrible scream, crying—­

‘You wretch! her head won’t fit—­you can’t hide her;’ and the poor woman jumped out of her bed, shrieking ‘Charles, Charles, Charles!’

Betty grew so nervous and frightened, that she fairly bawled to her colleague, Moggy, and told her she would not stay in the room unless she sat up all night with her.  So, together they kept watch and ward, and as the night wore on, Mrs. Nutter’s slumbers grew more natural and less brief, and her paroxysms of waking terror less maniacal.  Still she would waken, with a cry that thrilled them, from some frightful vision, and seem to hear or see nothing aright for a good while after, and muttering to the frightened maids—­

’Listen to the knocking—­oh!—­breathing outside the door—­bolt it, Betty—­girls, say your prayers—­’tis he,’ or sometimes, ‘’tis she.’

And thus this heavy night wore over; and the wind, which began to rise as the hours passed, made sounds full of sad untranslatable meaning in the ears of the watchers.