more difficult to solve.

Slow and melancholy was their return, while with fear and hesitation
they communicated the result.

"Now, shame befall thee, Adam of Wills!" said a stout woman, to one of
the speakers; "thou wert ever a tough fighter; and the cudgel and ragged
staff were as glib in thine hands as a beggar's pouch on alms-days. Show
thy mettle, man. I'll spice thee a jug of barley-drink, an' thou be for
the bout this time."

"Nay," returned Adam, "I 'll fight Beelzebub if he be aught I can hit;
but these same boggarts, they say, a blow falls on 'em like rain-drops
on a mist, or like beating the wind with a corn-flail. I cannot fight
with naught, as it were."

"Shame on thee, Hal!" said a shrill-tongued, crooked little body,
arrayed in a coarse grey hood, and holding a stick, like unto a
one-handed crutch, of enormous dimensions. "Shame on thee! I would watch
myself, but the night-wind sits indifferently on my stomach, and I am
too old now for these moonshine lifts."

She cast her little bleared eyes, half-shut and distilling contempt, on
the cowardly bystanders.

"Now, if there be not old Cicely," first went round in a whisper; then a
deep silence gradually pervaded the assembly.

She had just hobbled down to the cross, and the audience seemed to watch
her looks with awe and suspicion.