“Don’t be a blind fool, Karasch,” I exclaimed, losing my temper.
He looked at me and shook his head slowly with a suggestion of commiseration.
“It is not I who am the fool or blind, Burgwan,” he answered, almost sadly. “Listen. The first time I was thrown, I saw before me a stretch of beautiful turf and pricked my horse to a gallop across it when he plunged right into a pit; and I wonder I was not killed. The next time, just before dawn, I was feeling my way carefully when she herself appeared suddenly in front of me, all white fire, and flashing a gleaming sword before my eyes. I checked my horse, in fear, and he reared and fell back almost on top of me. Is not that enough to prove the spell?”
It proved to me that he had either been asleep on his horse or was suffering from disordered nerves as the result of fatigue and the pain from his arm; but when I told him so, he grew more morose and pitying in his manner.
“I know why you talk as you do,” he said. “You have looked into her eyes. The spell is on you, too—on all here; and we shall die—unless she does.” The last three words were uttered after a long pause, during which he had glanced ominously and fearsomely toward the hut. Superstition held him in its thrall.
I judged it best to check the thought under the words at once.
“The man who lays a finger on her to her hurt will have to reckon with me, Karasch,” I said, sternly, and turned away.
He made no reply, but rode on to the shed some distance to the rear of the tent, where we stalled the horses.
I began to scent a fresh danger for the “witch,” and was fast growing as anxious as she herself could be to get away. If Karasch believed that he would be saving me from the spell by killing her, I knew he was quite capable of doing it in the face of any commands I might lay upon him and the others.
It was easy to guess at his crude reasoning. I had looked into her eyes, and was thus under her spell while she lived. My orders for her safety would thus be regarded as the result of the accursed enchantment; and they would only have to kill her to free me from the spell and make me to see that they had done the right thing. They would feel that I should then be as eager to reward them for her murder as I was now to forbid them touching her.