dy and mind, and found in it something to trust; yes,
even signs of that sympathy which she so sorely needed. So she told her
all the tale from the first word of it to the last.

The Mare listened in silence, for no story of evil perpetrated by a
Spaniard seemed to move or astonish her, only when Lysbeth had done, she
said:

"Ah! child, had you but known of me, and where to find me, you should
have asked my aid."

"Why, mother, what could you have done?" answered Lysbeth.

"Done? I would have followed him by night until I found my chance in
some lonely place, and there I would have----" Then she stretched out
her bony hand to the red light of the fire, and Lysbeth saw that in it
was a knife.

She sank back aghast.

"Why are you frightened, my pretty lady?" asked the Mare. "I tell you
that I live on for only one thing--to kill Spaniards, yes, priests first
and then the others. Oh! I have a long count to pay; for every time that
he was tortured a life, for every groan he uttered at the stake a life;
yes, so many for the father and half as many for the son. Well, I shall
live to be old, I know that I shall live to be old, and the count will
be discharged, ay, to the last stiver."

As she spoke, the outlawed Water Wife had risen, and the flare of the
fire struck full upon her. It was an awful face that Lysbeth beheld by
the light of it, full of fierceness and energy, the face of an inspired
avenger, dread and unnatural, yet not altogether repulsive. Indeed, that
countenance was such as an imaginative artist might give to one of the
beasts in the Book of Revelation. Amazed and terrified, Lysbeth said
nothing.

"I frighten you, gentle one," went on the Mare, "you who, although
you have suffered, are still full of the milk of human kindness. Wait,
woman, wait till they have murdered the man you love, till your heart is
like my heart, and you also live on, not for love's sake, not for life's
sake, but to be a Sword, a Sword, a Sword in the hand of God!"

"Cease, I pray you," said Lysbeth in a low voice; "I am faint, I am
ill."

Ill she was indeed, and before morning there, in that lonely hovel on
the island of the mere, a son was born to her.

When she was strong enough her nurse spoke:

"Will you keep the brat, or shall I kill it?" she asked.

"How can I kill my child?" said Lysbeth.

"It is the Spaniard's child also, and remember the curse you told me of,
your own curse uttered on this thing before ever