Not seeing them, she was brokenhearted; when she heard the sea eagle cry from the direction of Sluys, in the country, she went towards the cry. Going in the meadow at the foot of a dyke of faggots and green sod, she heard from the other side of the dyke the two devils talking together. One said:
“I shall have the half of it.”
The other replied:
“Thou shalt have none of it; what is Katheline’s is mine.”
Then they cursed and blasphemed like madmen, disputing between them who should have to himself alone the money and the loves of Katheline and Nele together. Transfixed with fear, daring neither to speak nor budge, Katheline presently heard them fighting, then one of them saying:
“This steel is cold.” Then a rattling breath and the fall of a heavy body.
Affrighted, she walked back to her cottage. At two o’clock in the night she heard again, but now in her garden, the cry of the sea eagle. She went to open and saw before the door her lover devil alone. She asked him:
“What hast thou done with the other?”
“He will not come again,” he answered.
Then embracing her he caressed her. And he seemed to her colder than usual. And Katheline’s spirit was well awaked. When he went away, he asked her for twenty florins, all she had: she gave him seventeen.