“Thou shalt not touch this dead man; he is my husband. Seek what thou requirest elsewhere.”
The witch placed a long hand on the distracted widow’s shoulder.
“Be not so foolish, poor wench,” said she. “Trouble not over what I do. I tell thee I am thy friend, and the hand of thy dead husband once in my possession, will be of more service to thee than if left rotting here. Will not the ravens come—the birds of the air—and peck the bones clean; and is that not a greater defilement than boiling the fat in the witches’ kitchen, and drying the dead man’s hand in the smoke of the witches’ fire? Listen!—dost know the meaning of revenge?”
The poor widow’s eyes glistened as though a fire burned within her brain, and she repeated the single word “Revenge.”
The old witch laughed, and said:
“Ah—thou knowest that. Tell me thy story.”
Then the younger woman told the tale of want and woe and cruel wrong.
“The steward cast his eyes on me,” she said, “but I loved my husband, and would have nought to do with him. And one day, my man being near when the tyrant insulted me, struck him to the ground, whereupon the steward dismissed him from his post, and we were made beggars. Then my child sickened, and since we needed nourishment, and there was no chance of honest labour for my husband, he took to the forest and shot one of the deer, saying that no wife or child of his should starve as long as there were any of God’s creatures to be shot in the woods of Longdendale. The steward heard of this, and, like a wicked fiend, he hounded my man to death. There his body hangs, and the man who drove him to sin walks about in pride and power.”
She ended her story with a wail, and commenced to tear at her hair.
“Where is thy child?” asked the hag.