“You are very late, Nychol!” cried a sharp voice; “the gallows was erected at noon, and it takes but six hours to come from Skongen to Vygla. Did you have an extra job?”
These questions were asked just as the door was opened. The woman who opened it, seeing two strange faces instead of the one which she expected, uttered a frightened, threatening shriek, and started back.
Her appearance was by no means reassuring. She was tall; she held above her head an iron lamp, which threw a bright light upon her face. Her livid features, her bony, angular figure, were corpse-like, and her hollow eyes emitted ominous flashes like those of a funeral torch. She wore a red serge petticoat, reaching to her bare feet, and apparently stained in spots with deeper red. Her fleshless breast was half covered by a man’s jacket of the same color, the sleeves of which were cut off at the elbow. The wind, coming in at the open door, blew about her head her long gray hair, which was insecurely fastened with a strip of bark, and lent an added ferocity to her savage face.
“Good lady,” said the younger of the new-comers, “the rain falls in floods; you have a roof, and we have gold.”
His aged comrade plucked him by the cloak, whispering, “Oh, master, what are you saying? If this be not the abode of the Devil, it is the habitation of some robber. Our money, instead of protecting us, will be our ruin.”
“Hush!” said the young man; and drawing a purse from his bosom, he displayed it to his hostess, repeating his request as he did so.
The woman, recovering from her surprise, studied them in turn with fixed and haggard eyes.
“Strangers,” she cried at last, as if she had not heard their voices, “have your guardian angels forsaken you? What would you with the cursed inhabitants of the Cursed Tower? Strangers, they were no mortals who sent you here for shelter, or they would have told you: Better are the lightning and the storm than the hearth within Vygla tower. The only living man who may enter here, enters the abode of no other human being; he only leaves solitude for a crowd; he lives only by death; he has no place save in the curses of men; he serves their vengeance only; he exists by their crimes alone; and the vilest criminal, in the hour of his doom, vents on him the universal scorn, and feels that he has a right to add to it his own contempt. Strangers! You must indeed be strangers, for your foot does not yet shrink with horror from the threshold of this tower. Disturb no longer the she-wolf and her cubs; return to the road travelled by the rest of mankind, and if you would not be shunned by your fellows, do not tell them that your face ever caught the rays of the lamp of the dwellers in Vygla tower.” With these words, pointing to the door, she advanced toward the two travellers. The old man trembled in every limb, and looked imploringly at the young man, who, understanding nothing of the tall woman’s words because of the great rapidity of her speech, thought her crazy, and was in no wise disposed to go out again into the rain, which still fell heavily.
“Faith, good hostess, you describe a strange character, whose acquaintance I would not lose this chance of making.”
“His acquaintance, young man, is soon made, sooner ended. If your evil spirit urge you to seek it, go kill some living man, or profane the dead.”