“’Tis news you have brought us, then, Christian?” said Mrs. Yeobright.

“Ay, sure, about a witch, and ye must overlook my time o’ day; for, says I, ’I must go and tell ’em, though they won’t have half done dinner.’  I assure ye it made me shake like a driven leaf.  Do ye think any harm will come o’t?”

“Well—­what?”

“This morning at church we was all standing up, and the pa’son said, ‘Let us pray.’  ‘Well,’ thinks I, ‘one may as well kneel as stand’; so down I went; and, more than that, all the rest were as willing to oblige the man as I. We hadn’t been hard at it for more than a minute when a most terrible screech sounded through church, as if somebody had just gied up their heart’s blood.  All the folk jumped up and then we found that Susan Nunsuch had pricked Miss Vye with a long stocking-needle, as she had threatened to do as soon as ever she could get the young lady to church, where she don’t come very often.  She’ve waited for this chance for weeks, so as to draw her blood and put an end to the bewitching of Susan’s children that has been carried on so long.  Sue followed her into church, sat next to her, and as soon as she could find a chance in went the stocking-needle into my lady’s arm.”

“Good heaven, how horrid!” said Mrs. Yeobright.

“Sue pricked her that deep that the maid fainted away; and as I was afeard there might be some tumult among us, I got behind the bass-viol and didn’t see no more.  But they carried her out into the air, ’tis said; but when they looked round for Sue she was gone.  What a scream that girl gied, poor thing!  There were the pa’son in his surplice holding up his hand and saying, ‘Sit down, my good people, sit down!’ But the deuce a bit would they sit down.  O, and what d’ye think I found out, Mrs. Yeobright?  The pa’son wears a suit of clothes under his surplice!—­I could see his black sleeves when he held up his arm.”

“’Tis a cruel thing,” said Yeobright.

“Yes,” said his mother.

“The nation ought to look into it,” said Christian.  “Here’s Humphrey coming, I think.”

In came Humphrey.  “Well, have ye heard the news?  But I see you have.  ’Tis a very strange thing that whenever one of Egdon folk goes to church some rum job or other is sure to be doing.  The last time one of us was there was when neighbour Fairway went in the fall; and that was the day you forbad the banns, Mrs. Yeobright.”

“Has this cruelly treated girl been able to walk home?” said Clym.

“They say she got better, and went home very well.  And now I’ve told it I must be moving homeward myself.”

“And I,” said Humphrey.  “Truly now we shall see if there’s anything in what folks say about her.”

When they were gone into the heath again Yeobright said quietly to his mother, “Do you think I have turned teacher too soon?”

“It is right that there should be schoolmasters, and missionaries, and all such men,” she replied.  “But it is right, too, that I should try to lift you out of this life into something richer, and that you should not come back again, and be as if I had not tried at all.”