trickle of soot.

By and by footsteps sounded outside the door. There was a pause;
a hurried whispering of women's voices; the twitter of a nervous
laugh, and then the door was pushed softly opens and the girl to
whom the one-eyed Hans had given the necklace of blue and white
beads with the filigree cross hanging from it, peeped
uncertainly into the room. Behind her broad, heavy face were
three others, equally homely and stolid; for a while all four
stood there, looking blankly into the room and around it.
Nothing was there but the peddler's knapsack lying in the middle
of the floor-the man was gone. The light of expectancy slowly
faded Out of the girl's face, and in its place succeeded first
bewilderment and then dull alarm. "But, dear heaven," she said,
"where then has the peddler man gone?"

A moment or two of silence followed her speech. "Perhaps," said
one of the others, in a voice hushed with awe, "perhaps it was
the evil one himself to whom thou didst open the door."

Again there was a hushed and breathless pause; it was the lass
who had let Hans in at the postern, who next spoke.

"Yes," said she, in a voice trembling with fright at what she
had done, "yes, it must have been the evil one, for now I
remember he had but one eye." The four girls crossed themselves,
and their eyes grew big and round with the fright.

Suddenly a shower of mortar came rattling down the chimney.
"Ach!" cried the four, as with one voice. Bang! the door was