sure to be ill. To this, one of them, however, added that he
remembered his mother saying that whoever in bad health drank of
the well was sure to get better. But the majority agreed that the
former was the right version of the story- for was she not a witch,
an old hating witch, whose delight was to do mischief? One said he
had heard that she took the shape of a young woman sometimes, as
beautiful as an angel, and then was most dangerous of all, for she
struck every man who looked upon her stone-blind.

Peter ventured the question whether she might not as likely be an
angel that took the form of an old woman, as an old woman that took
the form of an angel. But nobody except Curdie, who was holding
his peace with all his might, saw any sense in the question. They
said an old woman might be very glad to make herself look like a
young one, but who ever heard of a young and beautiful one making
herself look old and ugly?

Peter asked why they were so much more ready to believe the bad
that was said of her than the good. They answered, because she was
bad. He asked why they believed her to be bad, and they answered,
because she did bad things. When he asked how they knew that, they
said, because she was a bad creature. Even if they didn't know it,
they said, a woman like that was so much more likely to be bad than
good. Why did she go about at night? Why did she appear only now
and then, and on such occasions? One went on to tell how one night
when his grandfather had been having a jolly time of it with his
friends in the market town, she had served him so upon his way home
that the poor man never drank a drop of anything stronger than
water after it to the day of his death. She dragged him into a
bog, and tumbled him up and down in it till he was nearly dead.