Counting the dells and doxies and other morts. Most are here, the rest are

wandering eastward, along the winter lay. We follow at dawn…'

'I do not see the Wen among the honest folk about me. Where may he be?'

'Poor lad, his diet is brimstone now, and over hot for a delicate taste. He was

killed in a brawl, somewhere about midsummer.'

'I sorrow to hear that; the Wen was a capable man, and brave.'

'That was he, truly. Black Bess, his dell, is of us yet, but absent on the

Eastward tramp; a fine lass, of nice ways and orderly conduct, none ever

seeing her drunk above four days in the seven.'

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'She was ever strict — I remember it well — a goodly wench and worthy all

Commendation. Her mother was more free and less particular; a troublesome

and ugly-tempered beldame, but furnished with a wit above the common.'

'We lost her through it. Her gift of palmistry and other sorts of fortune-telling

begot for her at last a witch's name and fame. The law roasted her to death at

A slow fire. It did touch me to a sort of tenderness to see the gallant way she

Met her lot — cursing and reviling all the crowd that gaped and gazed around

Her, whilst the flames licked upward toward her face and catched her thin

locks and crackled about her old gray head — cursing them, said I? —

cursing them! why an thou shouldst live a thousand years thou'dst never hear