When she awoke the sun was at the meridian, and she came down to the
noontide meal. Master Groot was looking much entertained.
Wearmouth, he said, was in a commotion. The great Dutch Whitburn
man-at-arms had come in full of the wonderful story. Not only had
the grisly lady vanished, but a cross-bow man had shot an enormous
hare on the moor, a creature with one ear torn off, and a seam on its
face, and Masters Hardcastle and Ridley altogether favoured the
belief that it was the sorceress herself without time to change her
shape. Did Mynheer Groot hold with them?
For though Dutch and Flemings were not wholly friendly at home, yet
in a strange country they held together, and remembered that they
were both Netherlanders, and Hannekin would fain know what thought
the wise man.
"Depend on it, there was no time for a change," gravely said Groot.
"Have not Nostradamus, Albertus Magnus, and Rogerus Bacon" (he was
heaping names together as he saw Hannekin's big gray eyes grow
rounder and rounder) "all averred that the great Diabolus can give
his minions power to change themselves at will into hares, cats, or
toads to transport themselves to the Sabbath on Walpurgs' night?"
"You deem it in sooth," said the Dutchman, "for know you that the
parish priest swears, and so do the more part of the villein fisher
folk, that there's no sorcery in the matter, but that she is a true
and holy maid, with no powers save what the Saints had given her, and
that her cures were by skill.
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