“Weak woman!” muttered the hermit; then he continued in a firm voice: “Control your grief; I laugh at mine. Listen, Lucy Pelryhn. While you still weep for your son, I have already begun to avenge him. It was for a soldier in the Munkholm regiment that his sweetheart betrayed him. The whole regiment shall perish by my hands. Look, Lucy Pelryhn!”
He had rolled up the sleeves of his gown, and showed the widow his misshapen arms stained with blood.
“Yes,” he said with a fierce roar, “Gill’s spirit shall delight to haunt Urchtal Sands and Cascadthymore ravine. Come, woman, do you not see this blood? Be comforted!”
Then all at once, as if struck by a sudden thought, he interrupted himself: “Widow, did you not receive an iron casket from me? What! I sent you gold and I bring you blood, and you still weep. Are you not human?”
The widow, absorbed in her despair, was silent.
“What!” said he, with a fierce laugh, “motionless and mute. You are no woman, then, Lucy Pelryhn!” and he shook her by the arm to rouse her. “Did not a messenger bring you an iron casket?”
The widow, lending him a brief attention, shook her head, and relapsed into her gloomy revery.
“Ah, the wretch!” cried the little man, “the miserable traitor! Spiagudry, that gold shall cost you dear!”
And stripping off his gown, he rushed from the hut with the growl of a hyena that scents a corpse.