he girl looked, backwards and perceived
that the old man's long-barrelled rifle was pointed directly at the back
of her head. In her terror she covered her face with her hands. "What
would you do?" cried she.

"Fear nothing, I only want that piece of gold which Fatia Negra gave
you. I'll not stake _my_ head on _your_ whimsies!"

The girl had anticipated something much worse than this, so she quietly
answered: "You can spare yourself the trouble, I have already returned
it to Fatia Negra. I would not carry it about with me any longer."

"You have acted wisely," said the old man, lowering his musket. "Now you
can ride on."

The early dawn was breaking as they reached home. When Anicza entered
her room she found hanging up beneath the ikon that gleamed and shone
over her bed both the damaged ducat and the little cross which she had
given to Fatia Negra two hours before. He must indeed be in league with
the devil--else how could he have got there, invisibly, so long before
them?

Anicza said not a word about it to anybody, but she hid both the amulets
safely away in her bosom again--and now she was right proud of her Fatia
Negra!

CHAPTER VIII

STRONG JUON

Henrietta's married life was not a happy one. Her husband was polite,
complaisant, and conventionally correct in his behaviour towards her,
and that was all. And then she saw so little of him. He was frequently
absent from Hidvar for weeks at a time, and when he returned he
regularly brought in his train a merry company of comrades, in whose
pastimes Henrietta could take no sort of pleasure.

During those long days when she had Hidvar all to herself and was left
entirely to the company of her sad thoughts, she would sometimes walk
about till late in the evening in the shady alleys of the home park,
listening to the songs of the girls working in the fields. At the end of
the park was a church, and in front of it a small clearing fenced around
with stakes and looking like a cabbage garden. It surely belonged to
some poor man or other. It did--and the poor man was the parish-priest.

Henrietta often saw him, a tall, grey-bearded man in a long black
cassock, hastening to his little garden; there the reverend gentleman
would divest himself of his long habit, produce a rake, and work till
late in the evening. Henrietta fancied at first that was merely a
dietetic diversion, but afterwards, when she found him there the next
day and the day after that, and at