“_Ta’ mej fan_ if she will!” cried Black Eric, suddenly straightening his shoulders and throwing back his head. “It’s a good thing I came back just in time. What are you, a parcel of weaklings, to let her bring you bad luck with her curses?” “She has done no harm,” ventured Olga, but her words sounded feeble. “Done no harm!” shrieked Black Eric, cracking his whip. “There was the time when the spring was well on the way. The grain was already up from the ground. The wheat was doing bravely, and the rye was a foot tall. She hadn’t been seen for some time----” “You’d been gone, then, too, I remember,” accused Olga. “You’d been gone, and we hadn’t seen her, and when you returned she----” “That’s nothing to do with it!” he snapped. “She appeared, and cursed us----” “She cursed _you_, you mean.” Olga hid behind her husband, peering out at Black Eric with hate in her eyes. “She has never troubled us----” “The bad luck fell upon all alike, didn’t it? With the grain as green as could be, and no crows to speak of. Everything pointed to a good summer. And what happened, I ask you?” His tones rang out clearly now, swept over them with hypnotic spell. “Come, Sven, before he gets us in his power,” she whispered. “The rains came down and washed it all away. We had to sow the second time, and then it was too late, and we lost everything, even the seed. And the rains washed away much of our land, dragged it into the ravines----” “That is true!” sighed the old man, looking even older and more wrinkled. The faces of the men lengthened, became sad and thoughtful. Memories of long, hard years of heart-breaking toil lingered with them. Many were bent and broken in the struggle, their joints swollen and knotted with rheumatism from the cruel winters. Ah, it had taken years to win their small farms from the hold of the forests, here on the hilly slopes of Wisconsin. They had given their lives to it. “It might have happened anyway,” pleaded Olga, gazing fearfully around upon the altered faces of the men. “We can’t expect all the years to be good as this one. Farmers everywhere have some bad years----” “And there was the time,” Black Eric, his eyes gleaming evilly, went on, paying no attention to her interruption, “that the children were coming home from school. They had made wreaths of poison-ivy and hung them around their necks. Witch Mary met them, and told them they would die at sundown. Did they not nearly die?” he demanded, this time addressing the women. “What are you saying?” cried Olga, drawing the little girl closer. “I have never heard of that.” “We thought best not to speak of it, lest the children get too frightened,” said Kaisa. “Young Eric nearly died, as it was. And certain it is they would all have died if they had not come home in time for us to treat them.” Olga stooped to lift the little girl, passionately folding her close.