"Wal, what on it, hey? What on it?" creaked a dreadful voice close behind them. Then, indeed, Fanny shrieked and tried to run, but Benny's hand held her fast. She hid her face against Benny's arm and sobbed.
It was the old Witch her very self. She looked at them out of her glittering eyes—O how she did look at them!—with her head drooped until her chin rested on her chest. This seemed to bring the arrows of her eyes to bear upon the enemy with greater force and precision.
"There ain't any law ag'in my having a cat and a broomstick, is there?" she asked in a voice like the cawing of a crow, bringing her staff down with a thump at the words "cat" and "broomstick." "What are you skeered of?"
"Why, you're queer, you know," said Benny desperately.
"Queer, queer?" piped the Witch; and then she laughed, or had a dreadful convulsion, Benny couldn't tell which, ending in a long, gurgling "Hoo-oo-oo!" on a very high key. "Now, s'pose you tell me what is 't makes me queer," said she, sitting down on a log and extracting from the rags on her bosom a pipe, which she prepared to smoke.
"Whew!" whistled Benny, "'twould take me from now till Christmas; I'd rather you'd tell me."
The crone lighted her pipe. The match flaring upon her wrinkled, copper-colored face and its gaunt features made her hideous. Poor little Fanny, who ventured to peep out at this moment, sobbed louder, and begged to go to her mother. The old woman puffed away at her pipe, fixing her gaze upon the children.
"Got a mother, hey?" said she.
"Yes."
"And a father?"