Tales from silver lands

by Charles Joseph Finger

So she went on, moving about in a little circle and sprinkling the powder over the grass. Presently the pile of grass began to move as if it hid some living thing, and soon the grass blades became smaller, rounded themselves, and turned brown. Then from them shot out fine hair-like points which became legs, and so each separate leaf turned to an ant. To the tree they scurried and up the trunk they swarmed, a little army marching over every leaf and twig until the green became brown, and louder and louder the old witch screamed, waving her arms the while:

“Creep and crawl—creep and crawl!

Up the tree-trunk, on the branch.

Creep and crawl—creep and crawl!”

The nearer to Stout Heart that they came, the louder she shrieked, leaping about and waving her long-taloned hands as she ordered:

“Seek and find the living thing.”

Then Stout Heart knew that trouble was brewing indeed, for against so many enemies there was no fighting. For a time he avoided them, but for a time only, and that by going higher and higher in the tree, crawling along the branch that hung over the lake, but nearer and nearer the ants came, and louder she bade them to

“Pinch him, bite him, torture him.”

At last there was nothing for it but to drop out of the tree, for he had been hanging to the end of a branch and the ants were already swarming over his hands and some running down his arms. So he let go his hold and went into the lake with a splash, down out of the sunshine and into the cool green-blue of the waters. He swam a little, trying to get out of the way before coming up, but had to put his head out soon to get a breath. Then suddenly he seemed to be in the middle of something that was moving about strangely, and it was with a sudden leaping of the heart that he found himself in the old witch’s basket net being drawn ashore. To be sure, he struggled and tried to escape, but it was of no use. What with her magic and her strength he was no more in her hands than is a little fish in the hands of a man. He was all mixed up with other lake things, with fish and with scum, with water-beetles and sticky weed, with mud and with wriggling creatures, and presently he found himself toppled head foremost into a basket, all dazed and weak. It was dark there, but by the bumping he knew that he was being carried somewhere.

Soon he was tumbled into an evil-smelling place and must have fallen into a trance, or slept. Again, he may not have known what passed because of the old witch’s enchantments, for when he came to himself he did not know whether he had been there for a long time or a little. But soon he made out that he was in a stone house and through a small hole in the wall saw that the place where the house stood was bare of grass and full of great gray rocks, and he remembered his dream and thought that it was all very unlike what had really happened.