ough!"

"Blasphemer, pay me and begone!"

"Pay you? I tell you I would if you were only a man; but it would be
sinful to pay a wretched old witch in the only way you deserve to be
paid!" said Cap, flourishing her riding whip before a creature tall
enough and strong enough to have doubled up her slight form together
and hurled it into the abyss.

"Gold! gold!" said the hag curtly, holding out black and talon-like
fingers, which she worked convulsively.

"Gold! gold, indeed! for such a wicked fortune! Not a penny!" said Cap.

"Ho! you're stingy; you do not like to part with the yellow demon that
has bought the souls of all your house!"

"Don't I? You shall see! There! If you want gold, go fish it from the
depth of the whirlpool," said Cap, taking her purse and casting it over
the precipice.

This exasperated the crone to frenzy.

"Away! Begone!" she cried, shaking her long arm at the girl. "Away!
Begone! The fate pursues you! The badge of blood is stamped upon your
palm!"

"'Fee--faw--fum'" said Cap.

"Scorner! Beware! The curse of the crimson hand is upon you!"

--"'I smell the blood of an Englishman'"--continued Cap.

"Derider of the fates, you are foredoomed to crime!"

--"'Be he alive or be he dead, I'll have his brains to butter my
bread!'" concluded Cap.

"Be silent!" shrieked the beldame.

"I won't!" said Cap. "Because you see, if we are in for the horrible, I
can beat you hollow at that!

"'Avaunt! and quit my sight!
Let the earth hide thee!
Thy bones are marrowless! Thy blood is cold!
Thou hast no speculation in those eyes
Which thou dost glare with?'"

"Begone! You're doomed! doomed! doomed!" shrieked the witch, retreating
into her hut.

Cap laughed and stroked the neck of her horse, saying:

"Gyp, my son, that was old Nick's wife, who was with us just this
instant, and now, indeed, Gyp, if we are to see the Hidden House this
afternoon, we must get on!"

And so saying she followed the path that wound half-way around the
Punch Bowl and then along the side of a little mountain torrent called
the Spout, which, rising in an opposite mountain, leaped from rock to
rock, with many a sinuous turn, as it wound through the thicket that
immediately surrounded the Hidden House until it finally jetted through
a subterranean channel into the Devil's Punch Bowl.

Capitola was now, unconsciously, upon the very spot, where, seventeen
years before, the old nurse had been forcibly