It was a bright Autumn morning. A dry wind had been blowing all
night through the shocks, and already some of the farmers had begun
to carry to their barns the sheaves which had stood hopelessly
dripping the day before. Ere Richard reached the yard, he saw, over
the top of the wall, the first load of wheat-sheaves from the
harvest-field, standing at the door of the barn, and high-uplifted
thereon the figure of Faithful Stopchase, one of the men, a
well-known frequenter of puritan assemblies all the country round,
who was holding forth, and that with much freedom, in tones that
sounded very like vituperation, if not malediction, against some one
invisible. He soon found that the object of his wrath was a certain
Welshwoman, named Rees, by her neighbours considered objectionable
on the ground of witchcraft, against whom this much could with truth
be urged, that she was so far from thinking it disreputable, that
she took no pains to repudiate the imputation of it. Her dress, had
it been judged by eyes of our day, would have been against her, but
it was only old-fashioned, not even antiquated: common in Queen
Elizabeth's time, it lingered still in remote country places--a gown
of dark stuff, made with a long waist and short skirt over a huge
farthingale; a ruff which stuck up and out, high and far, from her
throat; and a conical Welsh hat invading the heavens. Stopchase,
having descried her in the yard, had taken the opportunity of
breaking out upon her in language as far removed from that of
conventional politeness as his puritanical principles would permit.
Doubtless he considered it a rebuking of Satan, but forgot that,