*(16) Most are
here, the rest are wandering eastward, along the winter lay. We follow
at dawn.'
'I do not see the Wen among the honest folk about me. Where may he
be?'
'Poor lad, his diet is brimstone now, and over hot for a
delicate taste. He was killed in a brawl, somewhere about midsummer.'
'I sorrow to hear that; the Wen was a capable man, and brave.'
'That was he, truly. Black Bess, his dell, is of us yet, but
absent on the eastward tramp; a fine lass, of nice ways and orderly
conduct, none ever seeing her drunk above four days in the seven.'
'She was ever strict- I remember it well- a goodly wench and
worthy all commendation. Her mother was more free and less particular;
a troublesome and ugly-tempered beldame, but furnished with a wit
above the common.'
'We lost her through it. Her gift of palmistry and other sorts
of fortune-telling begot for her at last a witch's name and fame.
The law roasted her to death at a slow fire. It did touch me to a sort
of tenderness to see the gallant way she met her lot- cursing and
reviling all the crowd that gaped and gazed around her, whilst the
flames licked upward toward her face and catched her thin locks and
crackled about her old gray head- cursing them, said I?- cursing them!
why an thou shouldst live a thousand years thou'dst never hear so
masterful a cursing. Alack, her art died with her. There be base and
weakling imitations left, but no true blasphemy.'
The Ruffler sighed; the listeners sighed in sympathy; a general
depression fell upon the company for a moment, for even hardened
outcasts like these are not wholly dead to sentiment, but are able
to feel a fleeting sense of loss and affliction at wide intervals
and under peculiarly favoring circumstances- as in cases like to this,
for instance, when genius and culture depart and leave no heir.
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