you were married? If
it lives that curse shall cling to it, and through it you, too, shall be
accursed. Best let me kill it and have done."

"How can I kill my own child? Touch it not," answered Lysbeth sullenly.

So the black-eyed boy lived and throve.

Somewhat slowly, lying there in the island hut, Lysbeth won back her
strength. The Mare, or Mother Martha, as Lysbeth had now learned to call
her, tended her as few midwives would have done. Food, too, she had
in plenty, for Martha snared the fowl and caught the fish, or she made
visits to the mainland, and thence brought eggs and milk and flesh,
which, so she said, the boors of that country gave her as much as she
wanted of them. Also, to while away the hours, she would read to her out
of the Testament, and from that reading Lysbeth learnt many things which
until then she had not known. Indeed, before it was done with--Catholic
though she was--she began to wonder in what lay the wickedness of these
heretics, and how it came about that they were worthy of death and
torment, since, sooth to say, in this Book she could find no law to
which their lives and doctrine seemed to give offence.

Thus it happened that Martha, the fierce, half-crazy water-dweller,
sowed the seed in Lysbeth's heart that was to bear fruit in due season.

When three weeks had gone by and Lysbeth was on her feet again, though
as yet scarcely strong enough to travel, Martha told her that she had
business which would keep her from home a night, but what the business
was she refused to say. Accordingly on a certain afternoon, having left
good store of all things to Lysbeth's hand, the Mare departed in her
skiff, nor did she return till after midday on the morrow. Now Lysbeth
talked of leaving the island, but Martha would not suffer it, saying
that if she desired to go she must swim, and indeed when Lysbeth went
to look she found that the boat had been hidden elsewhere. So, nothing
loth, she stayed on, and in the crisp autumn air her health and beauty
came back to her, till she was once more much as she had been before the
day when she went sledging with Juan de Montalvo.

On a November morning, leaving her infant in the hut with Martha, who
had sworn to her on the Bible that she would not harm it, Lysbeth walked
to the extremity of the island. During the night the first sharp frost
of late autumn had fallen, making a thin film of ice upon the surface
of the lake, which melted rapidly as the sun