"Ha! ha! ha!" shouted he again and again; then composing himself, "Well, go on, Goodman Brown, go on; but, prithee, don't kill me with laughing."
     "Well, then, to end the matter at once," said Goodman Brown, considerably nettled, "there is my wife, Faith. It would break her dear little heart; and I'd rather break my own."
     "Nay, if that be the case," answered the other, "then go thy ways, Goodman Brown. I would not for twenty old women like the one hobbling before us that Faith should come to any harm."
     As he spoke he pointed his staff at a female figure on the path, in whom Goodman Brown recognised a very pious and exemplary dame, who had taught him his catechism in youth, and was still his moral and spiritual adviser, jointly with the minister and Deacon Gookin. "A marvel, truly, that Goody Cloyse should be so far in the wilderness at nightfall," said he. "But with your leave, friend, I shall take a cut through the woods until we have left this Christian woman behind. Being a stranger to you, she might ask whom I was consorting with and whither I was going."
     "Be it so," said his fellow-traveller. "Betake you the woods' and let me keep the path."
     Accordingly the young man turned aside, but took care to watch his companion, who advanced softly along the road until he had come within a staff's length of the old dame. She, meanwhile, was making the best of her way, with singular speed for so aged a woman, and mumbling some indistinct words - a prayer, doubtless - as she went. The traveller put forth his staff and touched her withered neck with what seemed the serpent's tail.
     "The devil!" screamed the pious old lady.
     "Then Goody Cloyse knows her old friend?" observed the traveller, confronting her and leaning on his writhing stick.
     "Ah, forsooth, and is it your worship indeed?" cried the good dame.
     "Yea, truly is it, and in the very image of my old gossip, Goodman Brown, the grandfather of the silly fellow that now is. But - would your worship believe it? - my broomstick hath strangely disappeared, stolen, as I suspect, by that unhanged witch, Goody Cory, and that, too, when I was all anointed with the juice of smallage, and cinquefoil, and wolf's bane - "
     "Mingled with fine wheat and the fat of a new-born babe," said the shape of old Goodman Brown.

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