“Why, no. We thought that natural enough, crazed with grief as she was. Never shall I forget when we found the body and carried it home. One of us could have carried her easily, so light she was. And beautiful, even when dead. Like an angel that’s been caught asleep.” His voice took on a dreamy, far-away tone. “Her hair was loose, and so long it swept the ground. It looked alive, and we dared not touch it, so we carried her high——”
The room was silent. Outside rang the voices of children playing among the willows.
“And the water fell from her hair, like great tears, all along the path——”
In the heavy silence the women stood motionless, eyes downcast. The men held their bodies rigidly. A burst of wind entered, passed through with a long, drawn-out sigh. It died with a moan. They started up apprehensively.
Kaisa rudely broke the silence. “But go on,” she said. “What happened when you went up afterward? After the girl was buried? We’ve never heard the real truth about that.”
“A week later, all in a friendly spirit, we went to her, thinking to buy her trees. The rest of us were cleaning out our timber. And she had the best trees of all, standing on the level stretch behind the hut, where they could easily be rolled right down to the river and taken to the mill. It would have relieved her poverty, and we thought that would help. We didn’t look for her to take on so, seeing we came for that——”
“Well?” questioned Kaisa, her black eyes snapping with curiosity.
“Black Eric was with us,” the old man went on. “That was a mistake, I suppose, seeing she blamed it all on him. Though I don’t know that he was guilty. He said she jumped right out of the boat, and that he couldn’t save her——”
“There are those,” said Olga, darkly, “that think he wouldn’t. That he’d coaxed her into the boat against her will, and that she had no choice. It was death—or something worse. That was like him!” Her breast heaved with excitement.
“What use to dig it up?” asked the old man gently. “No one really knows. Anyway, Black Eric went along, though he acted queer. One of the men had told him he daren’t. That’s how he came to go. Too much of a blusterer to take a dare. Everything was quiet when we got there. We rapped at the door, and no one answered. Then we went on to where the girl was buried, near the hut between two large oaks. There lay Mary, with the cloth tied around her head, and her red shawl around her shoulders, just as we’ve seen her dressed ever since. Lying flat down on the grave. I thought at first she was dead. So must the rest have thought, and Black Eric shrieked out, ‘O God, she’s dead!’ Then we heard a dreadful weeping, and she got up—no, I did not see her get up, but there she stood.