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She was now five-and-twenty; but she seemed older.

‘Six years of marriage, and only a few months of love,’ she sometimes whispered to herself. And then she thought of the apparent cause, and said, with a tragic glance at her withering limb, ‘If I could only again be as I was when he first saw me!’

She obediently destroyed her nostrums and charms; but there remained a hankering wish to try something else–some other sort of cure altogether. She had never revisited Trendle since she had been conducted to the house of the solitary by Rhoda against her will; but it now suddenly occurred to Gertrude that she would, in a last desperate effort at deliverance from this seeming curse, again seek out the man, if he yet lived. He was entitled to a certain credence, for the indistinct form he had raised in the glass had undoubtedly resembled the only woman in the world who–as she now knew, though not then–could have a reason for bearing her ill- will. The visit should be paid.

This time she went alone, though she nearly got lost on the heath, and roamed a considerable distance out of her way. Trendle’s house was reached at last, however: he was not indoors, and instead of waiting at the cottage, she went to where his bent figure was pointed out to her at work a long way off. Trendle remembered her, and laying down the handful of furze-roots which he was gathering and throwing into a heap, he offered to accompany her in her homeward direction, as the distance was considerable and the days were short. So they walked together, his head bowed nearly to the earth, and his form of a colour with it.

‘You can send away warts and other excrescences I know,’ she said; ‘why can’t you send away this?’ And the arm was uncovered.

‘You think too much of my powers!’ said Trendle; ‘and I am old and weak now, too. No, no; it is too much for me to attempt in my own person. What have ye tried?’

She named to him some of the hundred medicaments and counterspells which she had adopted from time to time. He shook his head.

‘Some were good enough,’ he said approvingly; ‘but not many of them for such as this. This is of the nature of a blight, not of the nature of a wound; and if you ever do throw it off; it will be all at once.’

‘If I only could!’

‘There is only one chance of doing it known to me. It has never failed in kindred afflictions,–that I can declare. But it is hard to carry out, and especially for a woman.’

‘Tell me!’ said she.

‘You must touch with the limb the neck of a man who’s been hanged.’

She started a little at the image he had raised.

‘Before he’s cold–just after he’s cut down,’ continued the conjuror impassively.

‘How can that do good?’

‘It will turn the blood and change the constitution. But, as I say, to do it is hard. You must get into jail, and wait for him when he’s brought off the gallows. Lots have done it, though perhaps not such pretty women as you. I used to send dozens for skin complaints. But that was in former times. The last I sent was in ’13–near twenty years ago.’

He had no more to tell her; and, when he had put her into a straight track homeward, turned and left her, refusing all money as at first.

CHAPTER VII. A RIDE

The communication sank deep into Gertrude’s mind. Her nature was rather a timid one; and probably of all remedies that the white wizard could have suggested there was not one which would have filled her with so much aversion as this, not to speak of the immense obstacles in the way of its adoption.