tle--that she might have enough to make some milk-porridge for their
dinner. Agnes did not mind it at the time, but when she saw the milk
now given to a beggar, as she called the wise woman--though, surely,
one might ask a draught of water, and accept a draught of milk, without
being a beggar in any such sense as Agnes's contemptuous use of the
word implied--a cloud came upon her forehead, and a double vertical
wrinkle settled over her nose. The wise woman saw it, for all her
business was with Agnes though she little knew it, and, rising, went
and offered the cup to the child, where she sat with her knitting in a
corner. Agnes looked at it, did not want it, was inclined to refuse it
from a beggar, but thinking it would show her consequence to assert her
rights, took it and drank it up. For whoever is possessed by a devil,
judges with the mind of that devil; and hence Agnes was guilty of such
a meanness as many who are themselves capable of something just as bad
will consider incredible.

The wise woman waited till she had finished it--then, looking into the
empty cup, said:

"You might have given me back as much as you had no claim upon!"

Agnes turned away and made no answer--far less from shame than
indignation.

The wise woman looked at the mother.

"You should not have offered it to her if you did not mean her to have
it," said the mother, siding with the devil in her child against the
wise woman and her child too. Some foolish people think they take
another's part when they take the part he takes.

The wise woman said nothing, but fixed her eyes upon her, and soon the
mother hid her face in her apron weeping. Then she turned again to
Agnes, who had never looked round but sat with her back to both, and
suddenly lapped her in the folds of her cloak. When the mother again
lifted her eyes, she had vanished.

Never supposing she had carried away her child, but uncomfortable
because of what she had said to the poor woman, the mother went to the
door, and called after her as she toiled slowly up the hill. But she
never turned her head; and the mother went back into her cottage.

The wise woman walked close past the shepherd and his dogs, and through
the midst of his flock of sheep. The shepherd wondered where she could
be going--right up the hill. There was something strange about her too,
he thought; and he followed her with his eyes as she went up and up.

It was near sunset, and as the sun went down, a gray c