“What you are I don’t know. But if you’re woman or if you’re fiend, come a step nearer and I’ll—I’ll shoot you!”
He pointed the pistol, but the muzzle tottered so that he could not have hit a tree.
“Ha! ha! ha!” I laughed in my throat in a voice that was sepulchral, then danced before them once again and began to sing:
“Water cannot quench me,
And fire cannot burn;
Pray, how will you slay me?
That have I yet to learn.”
The effect of this was to cause the pistol to drop on to the grass from his nerveless hand.
“Go—go ’way!” he stuttered; “go ’way, you—you witch!”
Whereupon I broke out in reply: