She named to him some of the hundred medicaments and counterspells which she had adopted from time to time.  He shook his head.

‘Some were good enough,’ he said approvingly; ’but not many of them for such as this.  This is of the nature of a blight, not of the nature of a wound; and if you ever do throw it off; it will be all at once.’

‘If I only could!’

’There is only one chance of doing it known to me.  It has never failed in kindred afflictions,—­that I can declare.  But it is hard to carry out, and especially for a woman.’

‘Tell me!’ said she.

‘You must touch with the limb the neck of a man who’s been hanged.’

She started a little at the image he had raised.

‘Before he’s cold—­just after he’s cut down,’ continued the conjuror impassively.

‘How can that do good?’

’It will turn the blood and change the constitution.  But, as I say, to do it is hard.  You must get into jail, and wait for him when he’s brought off the gallows.  Lots have done it, though perhaps not such pretty women as you.  I used to send dozens for skin complaints.  But that was in former times.  The last I sent was in ’13—­near twenty years ago.’

He had no more to tell her; and, when he had put her into a straight track homeward, turned and left her, refusing all money as at first.

CHAPTER VII—­A RIDE

The communication sank deep into Gertrude’s mind.  Her nature was rather a timid one; and probably of all remedies that the white wizard could have suggested there was not one which would have filled her with so much aversion as this, not to speak of the immense obstacles in the way of its adoption.

Casterbridge, the county-town, was a dozen or fifteen miles off; and though in those days, when men were executed for horse-stealing, arson, and burglary, an assize seldom passed without a hanging, it was not likely that she could get access to the body of the criminal unaided.  And the fear of her husband’s anger made her reluctant to breathe a word of Trendle’s suggestion to him or to anybody about him.

She did nothing for months, and patiently bore her disfigurement as before.  But her woman’s nature, craving for renewed love, through the medium of renewed beauty (she was but twenty-five), was ever stimulating her to try what, at any rate, could hardly do her any harm.  ’What came by a spell will go by a spell surely,’ she would say.  Whenever her imagination pictured the act she shrank in terror from the possibility of it:  then the words of the conjuror, ‘It will turn your blood,’ were seen to be capable of a scientific no less than a ghastly interpretation; the mastering desire returned, and urged her on again.