In my own secret chamber I have prayed, daily and nightly, for both—­prayed that their hearts might be turned.  Often have I besought my mother to let me take Jennet to church, but she never would consent.  And in that poor misguided child, dear young lady, there is a strange mixture of good and ill.  Afflicted with personal deformity, and delicate in health, the mind perhaps sympathising with the body, she is wayward and uncertain in temper, but sensitive and keenly alive to kindness, and with a shrewdness beyond her years.  At the risk of offending my mother, for I felt confident I was acting rightly, I have endeavoured to instil religious principles into her heart, and to inspire her with a love of truth.  Sometimes she has listened to me; and I have observed strange struggles in her nature, as if the good were obtaining mastery of the evil principle, and I have striven the more to convince her, and win her over, but never with entire success, for my efforts have been overcome by pernicious counsels, and sceptical sneers.  Oh, dear young lady, what would I not do to be the instrument of her salvation!”

“You pain me much by this relation, Alizon,” said Dorothy Assheton, who had listened with profound attention, “and I now wish more ardently than ever to take you from such a family.”

“I cannot leave them, dear young lady,” replied Alizon; “for I feel I may be of infinite service—­especially to Jennet—­by staying with them.  Where there is a soul to be saved, especially the soul of one dear as a sister, no sacrifice can be too great to make—­no price too heavy to pay.  By the blessing of Heaven I hope to save her!  And that is the great tie that binds me to a home, only so in name.”

“I will not oppose your virtuous intentions, dear Alizon,” replied Dorothy; “but I must now mention a circumstance in connexion with your mother, of which you are perhaps in ignorance, but which it is right you should know, and therefore no false delicacy on my part shall restrain me from mentioning it.  Your grandmother, Old Demdike, is in very ill depute in Pendle, and is stigmatised by the common folk, and even by others, as a witch.  Your mother, too, shares in the opprobrium attaching to her.”

“I dreaded this,” replied Alizon, turning deadly pale, and trembling violently, “I feared you had heard the terrible report.  But oh, believe it not!  My poor mother is erring enough, but she is not so bad as that.  Oh, believe it not!”

“I will not believe it,” said Dorothy, “since she is blessed with such a daughter as you.  But what I fear is that you—­you so kind, so good, so beautiful—­may come under the same ban.”

“I must run this risk also, in the good work I have appointed myself,” replied Alizon.  “If I am ill thought of by men, I shall have the approval of my own conscience to uphold me.  Whatever betide, and whatever be said, do not you think ill of me, dear young lady.”

“Fear it not,” returned Dorothy, earnestly.