For answer Jonitza glared and then burst out with: "What have I done that you won't let me go with you on St. George's Eve?"
Nicolaia was taken aback. "You've done nothing," he made haste to say. "But this must be kept a secret and your mother wouldn't like your going."
"I won't tell her," said Jonitza, wincing a little as he spoke; "that is—not until—eh—I show her the treasure. Then she won't care."
Nicolaia looked up and down the road as if trying to find a way out of a difficulty. At last he said faintly, "Well, all right, if you can meet us in the yard by the cow-sheds at ten o'clock."
On the day before the "Witch's Sabbath," Jonitza watched Nicolaia's father cut square blocks of turf and place them before every door and window of the farm-house and stables. "Why are you doing that?" he asked. The farmer smiled at him but did not answer. Katinka, however, came and whispered that it was to keep out the witches. She turned from him to help her father place thorn branches here and there in the cut turf. Jonitza followed every act with a fascinated air. "What's that for?" he asked her. "The witches run when they see thorns," she explained, smiling at the thought.
Two of the men who were helping on the farm at the time, offered to keep watch all night near the stables lest the witches should charm the cattle and do them harm. Mrs. Popescu, who heard them make the offer, asked them if they really believed in witches.
They looked at her with the air of grown up children. "If it wasn't witches," said one with a triumphant air, "what made old Theodoresco's cow give bloody milk last year for several months beginning the very next day after the 'Witch's Sabbath'?" Mrs. Popescu, seeing that it would be useless to argue the question, left them.
A half hour later, Nicolaia appeared and beckoned to Jonitza to follow him indoors. Here he took an earthen jar from a closet. "What do you think that is?" he asked.
"One of your mother's jars," Jonitza answered.