it did not worry
her any longer. She was accustomed to people keeping an eye on her
and using her neighbors as a spying ground.

A few days afterwards the news ran round the neighborhood that the
farmer had begun to take notice of his illegitimate child--not
altogether with a good will perhaps. Maren was supposed to have had
a hand in the arrangement. No-one understood her long patience with
him; especially as she had right on her side. But now it would seem
she had tired of it and had begun casting spells over the farmer's
young wife--first charmed a child into her, and then away again,
according to her will. Some declared Ditte was used for this
purpose--by conjuring her backwards, right back to her unborn days,
so that the child was obliged to seek a mother, and it was because
of this she never grew properly. Ditte was extraordinarily small for
her age, for all she was never really ill. Probably she was not
allowed to grow as she should do, or she would be too big to will
away to nothing.

There was much to be said both for and against having such as wise
Maren in the district. That she was a witch was well known; but as
they went she was in the main a good woman. She never used her
talents in the service of the Devil, that is as far as any one
knew--and she was kind to the poor; curing many a one without taking
payment for it. And as to the farmer of the Sand farm, he only got
what he deserved.

Maren's fame was established after this. People have short memories,
when it is to their own advantage, and Anders Olsen was seldom
generous to them. There would be long intervals in between his
visits, then suddenly he would take to coming often. The men of the
Sand farm had always been plagued by witchcraft. They might be
working in the fields, and bending down to pick up a stone or a
weed, when all of a sudden some unseen deviltry would strike them
with such excruciating pains in the back, that they could not
straighten themselves, and had to crawl home on all fours. There
they would lie groaning for weeks, suffering greatly from doing
nothing, and treated by cupping, leeches and good advice, till one
day the pain would disappear as quickly as it had come. They
themselves put it down to the evil eye of women, who perhaps felt
themselves ignored and took their revenge in this mean fashion;
others thought it was a punishment from Heaven for having too fat a
back. At all events this was their weak spot, and whenever th