"'I did not bring it,' he wailed. 'I did nothing—only tricks. Just tricks to get money—and it came behind me. Mother of God! It came behind me!'
"Not one of them ventured beyond the door that night. They had not even the heart to turn the smouser out, though he expected nothing less, and clung howling to Piet's knees when the lad rose to bolt the door. But in the morning he was gone, and"—here the Vrouw Grobelaar became truly impressive—"he had not even fetched his clothes from the hut.
"So you see, Katje, what comes of messing your fingers with wish-bones."
"Pooh!" sneered Katje, "I'm not afraid of the ghost of the fowl."
TAGALASH
When we came to the farmhouse, Katje and I, the Vrouw Grobelaar asked if we had been down by the spruit. We had— all the afternoon. There are cool and lonely places in the long grass beside the spruit, where its midsummer trickle of water sojourns peacefully in wide pools of depth and quiet.
"You can't mind that, anyhow," said Katje patiently.
"Why can't I?" demanded the Vrouw Grobelaar. "Why can't I mind that as well as anything else? I tell you, my girl, that things are not quite so simple as you take them to be. Even a herd of swine can house a devil, mark you. A bit of stick in the path can be a puff adder, and there are spells tucked away in the words of the Psalms even. And the spruit! Why, you crazy child, a spruit is just the place for things to lurk in wait. Yes, slippery things that have no name in man's speech. Even the Kafirs know of a spirit that lives in a pool."
Katje laughed, "Oh, Tagalash!" she said.
Tagalash is the little god who abducts girls who go down to fetch water in the evening, and carries them away to the dim world under the floor of the pools to be his brides. He lives in the water, and sings in the reeds, sometimes, of an evening and at other times works mischief among the crops and the cattle with spells that baffle the husbandman.