“My friend, these are marks you have made yourself with a horseshoe. What adventure has befallen you? Why should you hide it from us? I pray you, tell us the truth.”
The Black Man looked darkly and evilly upon Massang and answered never a word.
The third day the same thing happened. It was the White Man’s turn this time to stay at home and prepare the dinner, but he had no better success than his companions, and had only the same story to tell them when they returned.
“I am glad,” said Massang, when he had tried in vain to learn the truth from him, “that to-morrow it will be my turn to play at cook. Mayhap the same adventure will befall me, and then I shall learn why and how you three have deceived me.” The three said nothing, but they looked at each other understandingly.
The next morning, having secured a new pot from a near-by village, Massang [[59]]sat down to prepare dinner while the others went forth to hunt. “There!” said he to himself as he set the pot of stew over the fire, “now may the adventure that befell my companions come also to me, and then I shall see whether or no I have more wit than they to meet it!”
For some time there was no sound within or without save the snapping of the fire, but scarcely had the stew begun to boil before Massang’s sharp ears caught a little sound of rustling outside the window. He sat quite still, looking and listening. In a few moments there appeared over the edge of the window sill the top of a small ladder, and a thin, sharp voice exclaimed from without:
Up the ladder and into the room climbed a little old woman. Page 59.
“Alack-a-day! Alack-a-day! What a steep climb! But methinks I smell a savory stew cooking within!” Up the ladder, over the window sill and into the room climbed a little old woman not more than two feet high, all shriveled and bent, [[60]]and carrying on her back a bundle no bigger than an apple.
“Ah!” said she, looking from Massang to the stew and back to Massang again. “I pray you, son, give a poor old woman a taste of your stew—just a taste, and then I will be gone and trouble you no more.”