“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 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.