"That would be horrible," said Henrietta apprehensively.
"I don't think he will," said the priest; "the poison is really meant for a beast."
"I suppose he wants to kill some animal who is a domestic guardian, in order that he may rob a rich man's house."
"No. He wants to kill a faithful animal in order that he may steal a poor man's only treasure—his wife."
"How so?"
"Listen, my lady, and I will tell you. After this had happened, Juon Tare's wife, Mariora, came to me at an unusual hour. Generally she only comes on a Sunday for prayers. What she said to me was not so much a confession made to a priest as a confidence reposed in a friend; I am therefore not committing sacrilege by retailing it to another person. That young woman is exposed to temptation."
"What! in the midst of the forest?"
"Yes, in the midst of the forest, where, for weeks at a stretch, the herdsman hears no other human voice than his own thrown back to him by the echoes. The seducer in this case is Fatia Negra."
"Then he must dwell hard by."
"None knows his abiding dwelling, but his temporary resting places among the high Alps are these herdsmen's lonely huts. For this reason he lives in good fellowship with the mountain goatherds, does them no harm, brings presents for them and their wives, pays handsomely for every bit of bread, and thus makes it pretty sure that they will never betray him. The place where Juon Tare's wife dwells is called the ice valley. They call it so because it is here that the first ice of the winter appears; as early as mid-September the stream is fringed with it. There, by the side of the stream, stands a little wooden hut, one of whose walls reposes on the ascending rock behind it. Here dwells the fair Mariora all alone. And yet I am wrong to say alone, for three of them dwell together there—herself, a little one-year-old child, and a tame bear. Her husband she sometimes does not see for a week at a time, especially in the autumn and winter when the freshly fallen snow has obliterated the pastures. At such times the goatherd encamps on the summit of the mountains and nourishes his kids by felling with his axe a growing beech-tree, on which the little creatures fall and gnaw off the juicy buds. Whenever a snowstorm overtakes him, the herdsman drives the goats into a glen, and lest the snow should bury them all by the morning while they sleep, he drives them continually up and down, thus making them trample down the falling flakes. Meanwhile Mariora sits at home and spins the wool from which she makes her own and her husband's clothes, or she pounds maize into meal in a stone mortar for household needs, playing at intervals with her child."