"Why, she, the cook."
"Alive?" gasped the smith.
"No, dead in the sack."
"Then how the deuce did she get back?"
"How? I ask you how?"
"I really don't know how. I dug a hole ten feet deep, half filled the hole with lime, then the other half with stones and earth, and I planted a tree within the hole, and covered the earth all around with sods. It gave me two days' work. I'll take and show you the place if you like."
The priest looked at his nephew, bewildered.
"But, tell me," continued the smith, "how did she come back?"
"Well, they brought me a waggon of hay, and on the waggon there was a sack, which I thought must contain potatoes or turnips which some parishioner sent me, so I had the sack put in the kitchen. When the men had gone I undid the sack, and to my horror out pops the cook's ugly head, staring at me with her jutting goggle-eyes and her gaping mouth, looking like a horrid jack-in-the-box. Do come and take her away, or she'll drive me out of my senses; but come at once."
The smith went back to the priest's house, tied the cook in the sack, and then putting the sack on his shoulders, he carried his load away. He had made up his mind to go and chuck her down one of those almost bottomless shafts which abound in the stony plains of the Karst.