“In a few days she’d grown into an old woman, though she wasn’t young, even when the girl was born. But such a face as she turned to us! Like an old parchment containing saga lore. Wrinkled and mad with grief, but with a power! Almost as if she could have swept us away with one hand. Her eyes bored through us—they were like burnt-out cinders, dead, but yet terribly alive. When she saw Black Eric she went wild. She shrieked and whirled before us until I was dizzy. Some of the men were so afraid they didn’t even see her; she blinded them. She hurled her curses. Never, never have I seen such a sight!”
“Oh, poor thing, poor thing!” choked Olga, thinking, no doubt, of her own mother, lonely and bent with work in far-away Vermland.
“She drove us down the hill. Frightened as we all were, no one of us was shaken with terror as Black Eric was. Never has any one ventured near her since, though God knows how she lives. It’s not often we let a neighbour go without food. That’s not our way. But what could we do? There was a little clearing where she had her garden, and she and her girl used to work in the old days, but she’s old now, and even if she were able——”
“She has never so much as bought a pound of coffee here,” hastened Kaisa. “Half starved she must be, and frozen in the winter.”
“I hope he never comes back!” cried Olga passionately.
“He? Who?” questioned Kaisa.
“Black Eric. He’s evil—he’s——”
“Oh, as for that,” said the old man, “no one knew if he was guilty or not. There was no proof. And I’ve heard said he’s coming—soon. But one should not blame him too much. He was young when this happened, and he loved the girl——”
“Love? You call that love?” Olga’s tones were hot with wrath. She looked at her husband, Silent Sven, and her face changed and softened. Her little girl came running in through the open door, clasping a bunch of purplish-blue flowers in her hand. She pushed through the crowd and burrowed her golden head in her mother’s skirts.
“I am, afraid, Mamma; I am afraid,” she panted, trembling violently.