here. Aye, and had it not been for your father wanting a house-keeper,
the Holy Office would have burned the hag, and sent her to hell, flaming
like a torch of pine knots."

Now this was the first I had heard with exactness of the matter of old
Hanne's having been a witch. And now that I knew it for certain I began
to imagine all sorts of unholy things about the poor wretch, and grew
greatly jealous of Helene being so often in the kitchen. Whereas before I
had thought nothing at all about the matter, save that Hannchen was a
dull, pleasant, muttering, shuffling-footed old woman, who could make
rare good cream-cakes when you got her in the humor.

And that was not often.




CHAPTER VI

DUKE CASIMIR'S FAMILIAR


I mind it was some tale of years later that I got my first glimpse below
the surface of things in the town of Thorn, and especially in the castle
of the Wolfsberg.

Duke Casimir continued to move, as of yore, in cavalcade through
his subject city. The burghers bowed as obsequiously as ever when
they could not avoid meeting him. There were the old lordly
perquisitions--thunderings at iron-studded doors, battering-rams set