Late in the forenoon of the next day David awoke in his own bed in the manse of Woodilee. He awoke to a multitude of small aches and one great one, for his forehead was banded with pain. The room was as bright with sunshine as the little window would permit, but it seemed to him a dusk shot by curious colours, with Isobel’s head bobbing in it like a fish. Presently the face became clear and he saw it very near to him — a scared white face with red-rimmed eyes. Her voice penetrated the confused noises in his ears.

“The Lord be thankit, sir, the Lord be praised, Mr. David, ye’re comin’ oot o’ your dwam. Here’s a fine het drink for ye. Get it doun like a man and syne ye’ll maybe sleep. There’s nae banes broke, and I’ve dressed your face wi’ a sure salve. Dinna disturb the clouts, sir. Your skin’s ower clean to beal [fester], and ye’ll mend quick if ye let the clouts bide a wee.”

Her arm raised his aching head, and he swallowed the gruel. It made him drowsy, and soon he was asleep again, a healthy natural sleep, so that when he awoke in the evening he was in comparative ease and his headache had gone. Gingerly he felt his body. There were bruises on his legs, and one huge one on his right thigh. His cheeks under the bandages felt raw and scarred, and there was a tenderness about his throat and the muscles of his neck, as if angry hands had throttled him. But apart from his stiffness he seemed to have suffered no great bodily hurt, and the effects of the slight concussion had passed.

With this assurance his mind came out of its torpor, and he found himself in a misery of disquiet. The events of the night before returned to him only too clearly. He remembered his exaltation in the Wood — the glade, the altar. He recalled with abasement his panic and his flight. The glade again, the piping, the obscene dance — and at that memory he had almost staggered from his bed. He felt again the blind horror and wrath which had hurled him into the infernal throng.

Isobel’s anxious face appeared in the doorway.

“Ye’ve had a graund sleep, sir. And now ye’ll be for a bite o’ meat?”

“I have slept well, and I am well enough in body. Sit you down, Isobel Veitch, for I have much to say to you. How came I home last night?”

The woman sat down on the edge of a chair, and even in the twilight her nervousness was manifest.

“It wasna last nicht. It was aboot the hour o’ three this mornin’, and sic a nicht as I had waitin’ on ye! Oh, sir, what garred ye no hearken to me and gang to the Wud on Rood–Mass?”

“How do you know I was in the Wood?”

She did not answer.

“Tell me,” he said, “how I came home.”

“I was ryngin’ the hoose like a lost yowe, but I didna daur gang outbye. At twal hours I took a look up the road, and again when the knock was chappin’ twa. Syne I dozed off in my chair, till the knock waukened me. That was at three hours, and as I waukened I heard steps outbye. I keekit oot o’ the windy, but there was naebody on the road, just the yellow mune. I prayed to the Lord to strengthen me, and by-and-by I ventured out, but I fand naething. Syne I took a thocht to try the back yaird, and my hert gied a stound, for there was yoursel’, Mr. David, lyin’ like a cauld corp aneath the aipple tree. Blithe I was to find the breath still in ye, but I had a sair job gettin’ ye to your bed, sir, for ye’re a weary wecht for an auld wumman. The sun was up or I got your wounds washed and salved, and syne I sat by the bed prayin’ to the Lord that ye suld wauken in your richt mind, for I saw fine that the wounds o’ your body would heal, but I feared that the wits micht have clean gane frae ye. And now I am abundantly answered, for ye’re speakin’ like yoursel’, and your een’s as I mind them, and the blood’s back intil your cheeks. The Lord be thankit!”

But there was no jubilation in Isobel’s voice. Her fingers twined confusedly, and her eyes wandered.

“Do you know what befell me?” he asked.

“Eh, sirs, how suld I ken?”

“But what do you think? You find me in the small hours lying senseless at your door, with my face scarred and my body bruised. What do you think I had suffered?”

“I think ye were clawed by bogles, whilk a’body kens are gi’en a free dispensation on Rood–Mass E’en.”

“Woman, what is this talk of bogles from lips that have confessed Christ? I was assaulted by the Devil, but his emissaries were flesh and blood. I tell you it was women’s nails that tore my face, and men’s hands that clutched my throat. I walked in the Wood, for what has a minister of God to fear from trees and darkness? And as I walked I found in an open place a heathen altar, and that altar was covered with a linen cloth, as if for a sacrament. I was afraid — I confess it with shame — but the Lord used my fear for His own purpose, and led me back in my flight to that very altar. And there I saw what may God in His mercy forbid that I should see again — a dance of devils to the Devil’s piping. In my wrath I rushed among them, and tore the mask from the Devil’s head, and then they overbore me and I lost my senses. When I wrestled with them I wrestled with flesh and blood — perishing men and women rapt in a lust of evil.”

He stopped, and Isobel’s eyes did not meet his. “Keep us a’!” she moaned.

“These men and women were, I firmly believe, my own parishioners.”

“It canna be,” the old woman croaked. “Ye werena yoursel’, Mr. David, sir. . . . Ye were clean fey wi’ the blackness o’ the Wud and the mune and the wanchancy hour. Ye saw ferlies [marvels], but they werena flesh and bluid, sir. . . . ”

“I saw the bodies of men and women in Woodilee who have sold their souls to damnation. Isobel Veitch, as your master and your minister, I charge you, as you will answer before the Judgment Seat, what know you of the accursed thing in this parish?”

“Me!” she cried. “Me! I ken nocht. Me and my man aye keepit clear o’ the Wud.”

“Which is to say that there were others in Woodilee who did not. Answer me, woman, as you hope for salvation. The sin of witchcraft is rampant here, and I will not rest till I have rooted it out. Who are those in Woodilee who keep tryst with the Devil?”

“How suld I ken? Oh, sir, I pray ye to speir nae mair questions. Woodilee has aye been kenned for a queer bit, lappit in the muckle Wud, but the guilty aye come by an ill end. There’s been mair witches howkit out o’ Woodilee and brunt than in ony ither parochine on the Water o’ Aller. Trust to your graund Gospel preachin’, Mr. David, to wyse folk a better gait, for if ye start speirin’ about the Wud ye’ll stir up a byke that will sting ye sair. As my faither used to say, him that spits against the wind spits in his ain face. Trust to conviction o’ sin bringin’ evildoers to repentance, as honest Mr. Macmichael did afore ye.”

“Did Mr. Macmichael know of this wickedness?”

“I canna tell. Nae doot he had a glimmerin’. But he was a quiet body wha keepit to the roads and his ain fireside, and wasna like yoursel’, aye ryngin’ the country like a moss-trooper. . . . Be content, sir, to let sleepin’ tykes lie till ye can catch them rauvagin’. Ye’ve a congregation o’ douce eident folk, and I’se warrant ye’ll lead them intil the straucht and narrow way. Maybe the warst’s no as ill as ye think. Maybe it’s just a sma’ backslidin’ in them that’s pilgrims to Sion. They’re weel kenned to be sound in doctrine, and there was mair signed the Covenant —”

“Peace,” he cried. “This is rank blasphemy, and a horrid hypocrisy. What care I for lip service when there are professors who are living a lie? Who is there I can trust? The man who is loudest in his profession may be exulting in secret and dreadful evil. He whom I think a saint may be the chief of sinners. Are there no true servants of Christ in Woodilee?”

“Plenty,” said Isobel.

“But who are they? I had thought Richie Smail at the Greenshiel a saint, but am I wrong?”

“Na, na. Ye’re safe wi’ Richie.”

“And yourself, Isobel?”

Colour came into her strained face. “I’m but a broken vessel, but neither my man nor me had ever trokin’s wi’ the Enemy.”

“But there are those to your knowledge who have? I demand from you their names.”

She pursed her lips. “Oh, sir, I ken nocht. What suld a widow~woman, thrang a’ the day in your service, ken o’ the doings in Woodilee?”

“Nevertheless you know something. You have heard rumours. Speak, I command you.”

Her face was drawn with fright, but her mouth was obstinate. “Wha am I to bring a railin’ accusation against onybody, when I have nae certainty of knowledge?”

“You are afraid. In God’s name, what do you fear? There is but the one fear, and that is the vengeance of the Almighty, and your silence puts you in jeopardy of His wrath.”

Nevertheless there was no change in the woman’s face. David saw that her recalcitrance could not be broken.

“Then listen to me, Isobel Veitch. I have had my eyes opened, and I will not rest till I have rooted this evil thing from Woodilee. I will search out and denounce every malefactor, though he were in my own Kirk Session. I will bring against them the terror of God and the arm of the human law. I will lay bare the evil mysteries of the Wood, though I have to hew down every tree with my own hand. In the strength of the Lord I will thresh this parish as corn is threshed, till I have separated the grain from the chaff and given the chaff to the burning. Make you your market for that, Isobel Veitch, and mind that he that is not for me is against me, and that in the day of God’s wrath the slack hand and the silent tongue will not be forgiven.”

The woman shivered and put a hand to her eyes.

“Will ye hae your bite o’ meat, sir?” she quavered.

“I will not break bread till God has given me clearness,” he said sternly; and Isobel, who was in the habit of spinning out her talks with her master till she was driven out, slipped from the room like a discharged prisoner who fears that the Court may change its mind.

David rose next morning after a sleepless night, battered in body, but with some peace of mind, and indeed a comfort which he scarcely dared to confess to himself. He had now a straight course before him. There was an evil thing in the place against which he had declared war, an omnipresent evil, for he did not know who were the guilty. The thing was like the Wood itself, an amorphous shadow clouding the daylight. Gone were the divided counsels, the scruples of conscience. What mattered his doubts about the policy of the Kirk at large when here before his eyes was a conflict of God and Belial? . . . For the first time, too, he could let his mind dwell without scruples upon the girl in the greenwood. The little glen that separated the pines from the oaks and the hazels had become for him the frontier between darkness and light — on the one side the innocency of the world which God had made, on the other the unclean haunts of devilry. . . . And yet he had first met Katrine among the pines. To his horror of the works of darkness was added a bitter sense of sacrilege — that obscene revelry should tread the very turf that her feet had trod.

That afternoon he set out for Chasehope. The matter should be without delay laid before his chief elder, and the monstrous suspicion which lurked at the back of his mind dispelled. He was aware that his face was a spectacle, but it should not be hidden, for it was part of his testimony. But at Chasehope there was no Ephraim Caird. The slatternly wife who met him, old before her time, with a clan of ragged children at her heels, was profuse in regrets. She dusted a settle for him, and offered new milk and a taste of her cheese, but all the time with an obvious discomfort. To think that Ephraim should be away when the minister came up the hill! . . . He............