“I’m not in his power, and I said we’d stay awhile,” he answered quietly.
“What brought you back, Eric?” asked Wise Olaf. “Love for Young Eric, I suppose?” The crowd responded with a smothered laugh.
Black Eric chose not to take offence. “Why, as for that,” he said, “perhaps I did want to see Young Eric. It’s natural enough for a father to want to see his son, isn’t it? But that wasn’t the real reason. I came because I couldn’t sleep. Night after night I lay awake, and always I heard a curious sound, like a tapping, tapping, tapping. I thought if I came back here I could rest again——”
“A tapping!” cried Olga. “Then you did take Witch Mary with you!”
Black Eric’s face, pale before, lost the last vestige of colour. He wheeled upon her. “What do you mean?” he demanded.
“The tapping of her cane!” she answered. “She’s not been seen since you left.”
“I hope to God she’s dead!” There was a note of defiant relief in Black Eric’s voice. At the shout of protest that greeted his words he became placating. “Well, she’s done us all harm, hasn’t she? She brought the drought upon us with her curse. She cursed yet again, and the dam broke up the river, and the flood came and drowned many of our cattle. She——”
Swarming in through the door came the children, cutting short his speech. They ran, terrified, to their mothers.
“I knew it!” sobbed Olga’s girl. “I knew something awful would come!”
“But what is it? What’s the matter?” cried the women, alarmed.