ng of women, and it was long before they could
get the smouser to his feet and bring him to speech. And
then he would not go a foot away from them.

"'It came; it came!' he babbled, quivering under the table-
cloth they had cast over his nakedness. 'It came--behind
me!' and forthwith he began to stammer in his own strange
tongue.

"'What was it?' demanded Oom Johannes, who was beginning to
feel nervous.

"'There was a ghost!' was all that Piet could tell him. 'It
frightened the smouser. It frightened all of us.'

"And by this time the smouser was babbling again, turning
from one to the other, like one who excuses himself.

"'I did not bring it,' he wailed. 'I did nothing--only
tricks. Just tricks to get money--and it came behind me.
Mother of God! It came behind me!'

"Not one of them ventured beyond the door that night. They
had not even the heart to turn the smouser out, though he
expected nothing less, and clung howling to Piet's knees
when the lad rose to bolt the door. But in the morning he
was gone, and"--here the Vrouw Grobelaar became truly
impressive--"he had not even fetched his clothes from the
hut.

"So you see, Katje, what comes of messing your fingers with
wish-bones."

"Pooh!" sneered Katje, "I'm not afraid of the ghost of the
fowl."

TAGALASH

When we came to the farmhouse, Katje and I, the Vrouw
Grobelaar asked if we had been down by the spruit. We had--
all the afternoon. There are cool and lonely places in the
long grass beside the spruit, where its midsummer trickle
of water sojourns peacefully in wide pools of depth and
quiet.

"You can't mind that, anyhow," said Katje patiently.

"Why can't I?" demanded the Vrouw Grobelaar. "Why can't I
mind that as well as anything else? I tell you, my girl,
that things are not quite so simple as you take them to be.
Even a herd of swine can house a devil, mark you. A bit of
stick in the path can be a puff adder, and there are spells
tucked away in the words of the Psalms even. And the
spruit! Why, you crazy child, a spruit is just the place
for things to lurk in wait. Yes, slippery things that have
no name in man's speech. Even the Kafirs know of a spirit
that lives in a pool."

Katje laughed, "Oh, Tagalash!" she said.

Tagalash is the little god who abducts girls who go down to
fetch water in the evening, and carries them away to the
dim world under the floor of the pools to be his brides. He
lives in the water, and sings in the re