surprised and still more sorry then, and asked her:

"Then why did you confess?"

"I am old and very poor," she said, "and I work for my living. There was
no way but to confess. If I hadn't they might have set me free. That
would ruin me, for no one would forget that I had been suspected of being
a witch, and so I would get no more work, and wherever I went they would
set the dogs on me. In a little while I would starve. The fire is best;
it is soon over. You have been good to me, you two, and I thank you."

She snuggled closer to the fire, and put out her hands to warm them, the
snow-flakes descending soft and still on her old gray head and making it
white and whiter. The crowd was gathering now, and an egg came flying
and struck her in the eye, and broke and ran down her face. There was a
laugh at that.

I told Satan all about the eleven girls and the old woman, once, but it
did not affect him. He only said it was the human race, and what the
human race did was of no consequence. And he said he had seen it made;
and it was not made of clay; it was made of mud--part of it was, anyway.
I knew what he meant by that--the Moral Sense. He saw the thought in my
head, and it tickled him and made him laugh. Then he called a bullock
out of a pasture and petted it and talked with it, and said:

"There--he wouldn't drive children mad with hunger and fright and
loneliness, and then burn them for confessing to things invented for them
which had never happened. And neither would he break the hearts of
innocent, poor old women and make them afraid to trust themselves among
their own race; and he would not insult them in their death-agony. For