Hadn't farmer Kiebel heard the sound of a horn behind him in the wood not far from the new Jewish cemetery when he was driving back from Wronke to Obersitzko after the last fair! "Toot, toot, toot!" He had got down and had drawn lots of crosses in the snow with his whip in front of the trembling horses and all around the cart; and then the black huntsman had rushed past him with horns blowing, dogs barking, and making a fearful noise. His cloak had flapped so much that it had almost blown Pan Kiebel down from his cart; but the crosses in the snow had protected the pious man, and the black huntsman had had to ride on. And there was a mountain at Ossówiec, where the witches had met last June, and where they would soon meet again in December, in order to deliberate where they should go in the shape of dust and wind. But if you painted "C.M.B.," the initials of the three Kings of the East, on all the doors and walls, no witch would be able to get in and throw something into your plate. Or you need only say to yourself, "God bless it," before you began to eat or drink, and then no witchcraft could harm your food, for the saints would hold their hands stretched out over the plate. Those who regularly prayed to the Holy Mother or to the saints had no need to fear the devil, who, four weeks ago, had come to miller Kierski at midnight--the man who lived at Latalice, north of Gradewitz, and was always swearing and drinking--and had almost wrung his neck off. He had been left on the dunghill behind his barn, where he lay quite stiff and blue in the face; and if St. Peter's cock had not flown on to the roof of the mill and crowed three times, [Pg 41] so that the devil thought it was the miller's cock crowing in the early morning, the miller would have been found as dead as a door-nail, with his face turned round to his back; and his soul would already have been in hell. Marianna firmly believed that ghosts were screaming in the pines outside, and that witches were dancing in the wind that howled round the farm; but above all she believed that the devil was running about on the Przykop like a will-o'-the-wisp, and was longing to get into the house, in order to fetch a soul to hell.