She then went down to the river which flowed past, in whose yellow and
turbid waters--for it was now swollen with rain--she washed the blood
from her hands and face with an apparently light heart. Having meditated
for some time, she fell a laughing at the fierce conflict that had just
taken place, exclaiming to herself--

"Ha, ha, ha! Well now if I had killed her--got the ould knife into her
heart--I might lave the counthry. If I had killed her now, throth it 'ud
be a good joke, an' all in a fit of passion, bekase she didn't come home
in time to let me meet him. Well, I'll go back an' spake soft to her,
for, afther all, she'll give me a hard life of it."

She returned; and, having entered the hut, perceived that the ear and
cheek of her step-mother were still bleeding.

"I'm sorry for what I did," she said, with the utmost frankness and good
nature. "Forgive me, mother; you know I'm a hasty devil--for a devil's
limb I am, no doubt of it. Forgive me, I say--do now--here, I'll get
something to stop the blood."

She sprang at the moment, with the agility of a wild cat, upon an old
chest that stood in the corner of the hut, exhibiting as she did it, a
leg and foot of surpassing symmetry and beauty. By stretching herself
up to her full length, she succeeded in pulling down several old cobwebs
that had been for years in the corner of the wall; and in the act of
doing so, disturbed some metallic substance, which fell first upon the
chest, from which it tumbled off to the ground, where it made two or
three narrowing circles, and then lay at rest.