Red Barbara was stooping over the form of the senseless woman, and grasping her round the body in order to raise her up and carry her away.
"So I've caught you at last, eh! you horrible, godless witch!"
The hag, taken quite by surprise, uttered a hoarse shriek, like a vulture startled from her prey and, springing up from Michal's side, extended her crooked fingers like the talons of a bird of prey, and raised them aloft to strike. But her claws would have been of little use to her, even if she had borrowed them from her patron Beelzebub himself, against the attack which Dame Sarah in her rage and fury now made upon her.
That lady's iron hand seized the witch with irresistible might. In vain she twisted and wriggled. Dame Sarah bent the witch's body back over the chopping-board.
"Let me go, woman!" yelled Barbara, with bloody, foaming lips. "Don't hold me like that or you'll rue it! I can bite, and my bite is worse than that of a mad dog. I'll drag you down to hell with me if you don't let me go."
"You'd bite me, you b——, would you?" cried Dame Sarah, with grim fury; "then bite yourself!" and with that, thrusting one of Barbara's arms against Barbara's own mouth, she forced the witch's clenched fist in between her wide open jaws. "Bite away, and choke!"
The face of the witch was already livid, her eyes were starting out of their sockets, she was very near being choked with her own fist. And Dame Sarah would certainly have bestowed a great benefit upon her own family, and all the powers in heaven and earth would certainly have forgiven her, if she had not loosed her hold upon the evil creature till its pestilential soul had gone to hell.
But it was otherwise decreed in the great book of predestination.
The uproar made by the two struggling women drew the whole household to the spot. The servants hastened promptly to the assistance of their mistress, and after tearing a considerable quantity of hair out of Red Barbara's head, they tied her hands behind her and, as she would not go willingly, they dragged her through the snow to the lockup. All the way thither the witch never ceased shouting: "For this I'll revenge myself on your whole house."
Michal knew nothing of all this, for she lay in a swoon. It was already late in the evening when she came to herself and gradually recognized the faces of those who stood round her.