y to blow her brains out if she did not comply with
his request. 'Very well,' said she, 'fire away: I would rather be shot
than hanged.' Perceiving he could do nothing with her by threats, he
fell to entreating, and said it was not a man he wanted to poison but a
wild beast. 'What sort of a beast do you want to kill?' she asked him.
'That is no business of yours,' said he. 'But it is my business,' she
replied, 'for the poison that a wolf or a savage dog will eat, a bear
will not even sniff at, and what makes one beast ill, on that will
another beast thrive.' 'Then you must know that it is a bear.'--'Swear
that you do not want the venom for a human being.' Fatia Negra swore
with all sorts of subterranean oaths that it was really for a bear that
he wanted the poison. The medicine-woman thereupon prepared for him a
mortal concoction capable of killing the most vigorous beast in the
world; then she kneaded honey-cakes, a delicacy to which bears are very
partial as everyone knows, and mixed it well into them. Fatia Negra gave
her ten ducats for the poison, but the old woman's conscience would not
allow her to rest, and the next day she brought the ducats to me for the
church's needs, as she put it,--and would I help her to relieve her soul
of the heavy burden which oppressed it. And what now if Fatia Negra,
contrary to his oath, were to make use of this poison against his
fellow-men?"

"That would be horrible," said Henrietta apprehensively.

"I don't think he will," said the priest; "the poison is really meant
for a beast."

"I suppose he wants to kill some animal who is a domestic guardian, in
order that he may rob a rich man's house."

"No. He wants to kill a faithful animal in order that he may steal a
poor man's only treasure--his wife."

"How so?"

"Listen, my lady, and I will tell you. After this had happened, Juon
Tare's wife, Mariora, came to me at an unusual hour. Generally she only
comes on a Sunday for prayers. What she said to me was not so much a
confession made to a priest as a confidence reposed in a friend; I am
therefore not committing sacrilege by retailing it to another person.
That young woman is exposed to temptation."

"What! in the midst of the forest?"

"Yes, in the midst of the forest, where, for weeks at a stretch, the
herdsman hears no other human voice than his own thrown back to him by
the echoes. The seducer in this case is Fatia Negra."

"Then he must dwell hard by."

"None knows