“This is no mad king—­he hath his wits sound.”

“How sanely he put his questions—­how like his former natural self was this abrupt imperious disposal of the matter!”

“God be thanked, his infirmity is spent!  This is no weakling, but a king.  He hath borne himself like to his own father.”

The air being filled with applause, Tom’s ear necessarily caught a little of it.  The effect which this had upon him was to put him greatly at his ease, and also to charge his system with very gratifying sensations.

However, his juvenile curiosity soon rose superior to these pleasant thoughts and feelings; he was eager to know what sort of deadly mischief the woman and the little girl could have been about; so, by his command, the two terrified and sobbing creatures were brought before him.

“What is it that these have done?” he inquired of the sheriff.

“Please your Majesty, a black crime is charged upon them, and clearly proven; wherefore the judges have decreed, according to the law, that they be hanged.  They sold themselves to the devil—­such is their crime.”

Tom shuddered.  He had been taught to abhor people who did this wicked thing.  Still, he was not going to deny himself the pleasure of feeding his curiosity for all that; so he asked—­

“Where was this done?—­and when?”

“On a midnight in December, in a ruined church, your Majesty.”

Tom shuddered again.

“Who was there present?”

“Only these two, your grace—­and that other.”

“Have these confessed?”

“Nay, not so, sire—­they do deny it.”

“Then prithee, how was it known?”

“Certain witness did see them wending thither, good your Majesty; this bred the suspicion, and dire effects have since confirmed and justified it.  In particular, it is in evidence that through the wicked power so obtained, they did invoke and bring about a storm that wasted all the region round about.  Above forty witnesses have proved the storm; and sooth one might have had a thousand, for all had reason to remember it, sith all had suffered by it.”

“Certes this is a serious matter.”  Tom turned this dark piece of scoundrelism over in his mind a while, then asked—­

“Suffered the woman also by the storm?”

Several old heads among the assemblage nodded their recognition of the wisdom of this question.  The sheriff, however, saw nothing consequential in the inquiry; he answered, with simple directness—­

“Indeed did she, your Majesty, and most righteously, as all aver.  Her habitation was swept away, and herself and child left shelterless.”

“Methinks the power to do herself so ill a turn was dearly bought.  She had been cheated, had she paid but a farthing for it; that she paid her soul, and her child’s, argueth that she is mad; if she is mad she knoweth not what she doth, therefore sinneth not.”