"Is your mother a witch?"
"She is," answered Tord, quite untroubled. "In stormy weather she rides out on a sea to meet the ships over which the waves are washing, and those who are carried overboard are hers."
"What does she do with them?" asked Berg.
"Oh, a witch always needs corpses. She makes ointments out of them, or perhaps she eats them. On moonlight nights she sits in the surf, where it is whitest, and the spray dashes over her. They say that she sits and searches for shipwrecked children's fingers and eyes."
"That is awful," said Berg.
The boy answered with infinite assurance: "That would be awful in others, but not in witches. They have to do so."
Berg Rese found that he had here come upon a new way of regarding the world and things.
"Do thieves have to steal, as witches have to use witchcraft?" he asked sharply.
"Yes, of course," answered the boy; "everyone has to do what he is destined to do." But then he added, with a cautious smile: "There are thieves also who have never stolen."
"Say out what you mean," said Berg.