"If ever you dare to repeat that word again," said she, "I'll leave you in the midst of this dark wood, and then you may either fly or seek Him whom you fear so much; I'll wash my hands of you."
Then Michal said not another word, but followed the witch, who led her so surely through the sylvan labyrinth that she actually stopped at a place in the midst of the thickest thicket, drew a knife from out of the trunk of a tree, and showed it to Michal.
"Look! This knife I stuck into that tree in the broad daylight, as I passed by this way, and now I have found it again in darkest night."
Not an hour had passed, and the moon still stood in the sky, when they arrived at the kopanitscha of Görgö.
"Here we stop," cried Pirka. "This is the house where the doves bill one another on the gables."
Just then, however, all the doves were asleep; but in the courtyard a woman was wandering about, who raised her hands toward the moon, and made all sorts of frantic gestures.
Pirka greeted her with strangely sounding words, not one of which Michal understood, and the kopanitschar's wife answered in the same fashion.
"Have you offered up a witch's prayer, and if so, for what have you prayed?"
"I have prayed that the devil may take the old vihodar."
"He has got him already. Janko bit him in the neck, and immediately he was a dead man."