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"Because the morrow has come that I have thought upon, and the hour of my power," said the crone; and she fell on the beach, and, lo! she was but stalks of the sea tangle, and dust of the sea sand, and the sand-lice hopped upon the place of her. "This is the strangest thing that befell between two seas," said the King's daughter of Duntrine. But the nurse broke out and moaned like an autumn gale.
The aged crone now stood before Hildegardis, and winked to her, in the midst of her low and humble salutation, in a strangely familiar manner, as though there were some secret between them. The lady felt an involuntary shudder, and could not withdraw her gaze from the features of that hideous countenance, hateful as it was to her.
"Get busy here, Jake, and truss up that other cat!" the first man ordered. "All right, Pete," was the answer. "Got any rope?" "Here's some," and the one addressed as Pete kicked over some net-cord toward the newcomer. Meanwhile Betty had desisted from her struggle to get loose. She was strong and wiry, but the old crone was more than a match for the Little Captain.
The effect of her rising thus eclipsed was more strange, more striking by far, than watching the gradual obscuration; and as I turned to look at the black chasm behind me, and saw the deadly alder, and the poison-vine waving darkly on the rocks around, I thought the scene wanted nothing but the figure of a palsied crone, plucking the fatal branches to concoct some charm of mischief.
But the appearance that amazed and really startled the girls most was the figure that sat facing them, as they entered the van. It was that of an old, old crone, sitting on a stool, bent forward with her sharp chin resting on her clenched fists, and her elbows on her knees, while iron-gray elf-locks hung about her wrinkled, nut-brown face, half screening it.
At dawn he sent us bad plantains, wheaten crusts, and cups of unpalatable coffee-tea , and, assisted by a crone more decrepid than himself, prepared for me his water- pipe, a gourd fitted with two reeds and a tile of baked clay by way of bowl: now he "knagged" at the slave girls, who were slow to work, then burst into a fury because some visitor ate Kat without offering it to him, or crossed the royal threshold in sandal or slipper.
"'Tis a bargain," cried the old crone, holding out her hard, bony hand. "Come, cash down!" "Not until you give me possession on Monday next; or you might serve me as your son has done." "Ha!" said the old woman, laughing and rubbing her hands together; "you begin to see daylight, do you?
And through the morning hours all Prime Singing above her broom she stood And swept the house from hall to hall. Then out she ran with tidings good, Tierce Across the field and down the lane, To share them with the neighbourhood. Four miles she walked, and home again, Sexts To sit through half the afternoon And hear a feeble crone complain.
As she spoke I saw the bent back of the poor old crone in the doorway beside her cat, and partly because of her blessing, and partly because, as I said before, whether witch or not, she was aged and feeble, and ill fitted for such work, I leapt from my saddle and gathered her another armful of fagots, and laid them on her hearth.
Come, no more let us mount guard by these gates, Aratus, nor wear our feet away with knocking there. Nay, let the crowing of the morning cock give others over to the bitter cold of dawn. Let Molon alone, my friend, bear the torment at that school of passion! For us, let us secure a quiet life, and some old crone to spit on us for luck, and so keep all unlovely things away.
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