（外文电子版资料）A. E. Van Vogt - The Witch.pdfVIP

A. E. VAN VOGT The Witch rom where he sat, half hidden by the scraggly line of bushes, Marson watched the old woman. It was minutes now since he had stopped reading. The afternoon air hung breathless around him. Even here, a cliff’s depth away from the sparkling tongue of sea that curled among the rocks below, the heat was a material thing, crushing at his strength. But it was the letter in his pocket, not the blazing sunlight, that weighed on Marson’s mind. Two days now since that startling letter had arrived; and he still hadn’t the beginning of the courage necessary to ask for an explanation. Frowning uncertainly—unsuspected—unsuspecting—he watched. The old woman basked in the sun. Her long, thin, pale head drooped in sleep. On and on she sat, moveless, an almost shapeless form in her black sack of a dress. The strain of looking hurt his eyes; his gaze wandered; embraced the long, low, tree-protected cottage with its neat, white garage and its aloneness there on that high, green hill overlooking the great spread of city. Marson had a brief, cozy sense of privacy—then he turned back to the old woman. For a long moment, he stared unshaken at the spot where she had been. He was conscious of a dim, intellectual surprise, but there was not a real thought in his head. After a brief period, he grew aware of the blank, and he thought: Thirty feet to the front door from where she had been sitting; and she would have had to cross his line of vision to get there. An old woman, perhaps ninety, perhaps a hundred or more, an incredibly old woman, capable of moving—well thirty feet a minute. Marson stood up. There was a searing pain where an edge of the sun had cut into his shoulders. But that passed. From