Therewith she rose up slowly, Birdalone helping her, and sat in her big chair silent awhile, and then she spake: My servant, thou hast for the more part served me well: but this time thou hast done ill, whereas thou hast been spying on my ways; whereof may come heavy trouble but if we look to it. Well is it for thee that thou hast none unto whom thou mightest babble; for then must I needs have slain thee here and now. But for this first time I pardon thee, and thou hast escaped the wrath. Her voice was soft and wheedling; but for Birdalone the terror had entered into her soul, and yet abode with her. The witch-wife sat a while, and then arose and went about the chamber, and came to a certain aumbry and opened it, and drew forth a little flasket of lead and a golden cup scored over with strange signs, and laid them on the board beside her chair, wherein she now sat down again, and spake once more, still in the same soft and wheedling voice: Yet, my servant, thy guilt would be required of me, if I let this pass as if to-day were the same as yesterday; yea, and of thee also would it be required; therefore it is a part of the pardon that thou be corrected: and the correction must be terrible to thee, that thou mayst remember never again to thrust thyself into the jaws of death. And what may I do to correct thee? It shall be in a strange way, such as thou hast never dreamed of. Yet the anguish thereof shall go to thine heart’s root; but this must thou needs bear, for my good and thine, so that both we may live and be merry hereafter. Go now, fill this cup with water from the spring and come back with it. Birdalone took the cup with a sinking heart, and filled it, and brought it back, and stood before the witch more dead than alive. Then the witch-wife took up the flasket and pulled out the stopple and betook it to Birdalone, and said: Drink of this now, a little sip, no more. And the maiden did so, and the liquor was no sooner down her gullet than the witch-wife and the chamber, and all things about her, became somewhat dim to her; but yet not so much so as that she could not see them. But when she stretched out her arm she could see it not at all, nor her limbs nor any other part of her which her eyes might fall upon. Then would she have uttered a lamentable wail, but the voice was sealed up in her and no sound came from her voice. Then she heard the witch-wife how she said (and yet she heard it as if her voice came from afar), Nay, thou canst not speak, and thou canst not see thyself, nor may any other, save me, and I but dimly. But this is but part of what I must lay upon thee; for next I must give thee a new shape, and that both thyself and all other may see. But, before I do that, I must speak a word to thee, which thy new shape would not suffer the sense thereof to reach to thine heart. Hearken! CHAPTER XII. THE WORDS OF THE WITCH-WIFE TO BIRDALONE.