He wore a gold-embroidered doublet buckled round with a stately girdle; his sleeves were trimmed with gold lace right up to the elbows. His large, tight-fitting jack-boots were of yellow buckskin, and they too were richly embroidered with lace. No bride could have wished for a more handsomely equipped bridegroom. But he had no sooner entered the room than Michal sprang from her bed, and wrapping herself in the bearskin, shrieked in a voice hoarse with rage:
"How dare you come in hither? This is the bedroom of my husband, the pastor of Great Leta! None else has any business here at all!"
The witch's potion must certainly have changed Michal's very nature, for language such as this was the last thing to be expected from so meek and gentle a creature in the hour of her terrible dereliction.
And some mighty spell really was at work, for that big, strong man, who could have brought the weak creature before him to her knees in the twinkling of an eye, was so frightened by Michal's repellent gesture, so timidly apprehensive of her furiously flashing eyes, that he could not utter a word, but slunk out of the chamber like a whipped cur.
Some person who had been eavesdropping outside all the time giggled aloud, and then was heard the voice of a man blaspheming the name of God, and gnashing his teeth with rage.
Surely that was not the parson of Great Leta?
Certainly not. But what has become of him? Well, after the work of yesterday night and to-day, the doors of every church are shut against Henry Catsrider, and the steps leading to every pulpit are broken down as far as he is concerned.
The old vihodar had taken very good care that his son should never be a clergyman again.
And Michal remained alone with her phantoms.
She thought upon the vanished days of her maidenhood; of the innocent joys amidst which her days had glided so sweetly away; of the studies, which had always been a source of delight to her.