“Has any one of you seen Witch Mary of late?” Wise Olaf, keeper of the country store, asked the question of the farmers gathered in a group on the “grocery side.” A curious, vivid silence followed. They had been rejoicing over their fields of grain, which stood, as one man had exultantly proclaimed, high as a man’s arms, and were heavy with promise. Some made as if to speak, shifted uneasily, sucked back the half-formed words. “Well?” questioned Wise Olaf. Through the summer stillness a wind swept up from the river, came sighing in through the open door, and rattled the loose papers about. There was something eery, electric, about it, as though it carried with it an unseen presence. “Hush! The women will hear you!” cautioned one, glancing across the room. “Not seen a sign of her all summer; but that’s a good sign,” nervously ventured a gnarled, bent old man, stooping over the counter to pick up a stray coffee bean. He rubbed it between his horny palms, and then fell to munching it, his long chin nearly meeting his nose in the process. Assuming an attitude of cheerfulness, he glanced around carelessly, and then slumped back into a chair. The women across the room were busy examining the rolls of blue and brown denim that Wise Olaf’s Kaisa displayed upon the counter, and had been chattering together busily. The summer was a good one, and they could buy extra yards. Underlying their Northern speech, in which were represented various provincial dialects of Sweden, was an undercurrent of wistful melancholy, as though they feared to be too joyous, lest some unforeseen disaster come upon them in the midst of their plenty. Now, quick to note a change of feeling in the men’s talk, they stopped, broken sentences suspended in the air, reluctantly left the goods upon the counter, and crossed to the other side. “But what is it?” asked Kaisa, looking around at the guilty faces. “We were just talking about Witch Mary,” answered Wise Olaf. “We agreed, long ago, not to talk of her.” Kaisa’s voice was high-pitched, nervous. Her keen, rather hard-featured face lit up with a curious, avid expression. “As long’s you’ve started, _has_ any one seen her?” “Not one time during the whole summer,” answered Olga, a fair, comely matron. “Though from my place I can see the top of the hill. Sometimes I run out, when the sun is high, thinking to catch a glimpse of her. The trees must have grown up about the hut. Every day, I remember, the year of the drought, I could see her standing there, waving her cane with one hand, and the other held to her brow, looking out over the valley.” “The river, you mean,” put in Wise Olaf, carefully tying a package with his knotted hands. A tremor passed over the crowd. “I doubt not it was the river,” said Olga, rebuked. The men, some standing, others seated on chairs, placed conveniently about, puffed more heavily at their long corn-cob pipes.