Witch Martha lived in a small lonely cottage down by the river. Very few
people ever went to see her in the day-time; but at night she often had
visitors. Mothers who suspected that their children were changelings,
whom the Trolds had put in the cradle, taking the human infants away;
girls who wanted to “turn the hearts” of their lovers, and lovers who
wanted to turn the hearts of the girls; peasants who had lost money
or valuables and wanted help to trace the thief--these and many
others sought secret counsel with Witch-Martha, and rarely went away
uncomforted. She was an old weather-beaten woman with a deeply wrinkled,
smoky-brown face, and small shrewd black eyes. The floor in her cottage
was strewn with sand and fresh juniper twigs; from the rafters under
the ceiling hung bunches of strange herbs; and in the windows were
flower-pots with blooming plants in them.
Martha was stooping at the hearth, blowing and puffing at the fire
under her coffee-pot, when the Sons of the Vikings knocked at the door.
Wolf-in-the-Temple was the man who took the lead; and when Witch-Martha
opened the upper half of the door (she never opened both at the same
time) she was not a little astonished to see the Captain’s son, Frithjof
Ronning, staring up at her with an anxious face.
“What cost thou want, lad?” she asked, gruffly; “thou hast gone astray
surely, and I’ll show thee the way home.”
“I am Wolf-in-the-Temple,” began Frithjof, thrusting out his chest, and
raising his head proudly.
“Dear me, you don’t say so!” exclaimed Martha.
“My comrade and foster-brother Skull-Splitter has been wounded; and I
want thee, old crone, to stanch his blood before he bleeds to death.”
“Dear, dear me, how very strange!” ejaculated the Witch, and shook her
aged head.
She had been accustomed to extraordinary requests; but the language
of this boy struck her as being something of the queerest she had yet
heard.
“Where is thy Skull-Splitter, lad?” she asked, looking at him dubiously.
“Right here in the underbrush,” Wolf-in-the-Temple retorted, gallantly;
“stir thy aged stumps now, and thou shalt be right royally rewarded.”
He had learned from Walter Scott’s romances that this was the proper way
to address inferiors, and he prided himself not a little on his jaunty
condescension. Imagine then his surprise when the “old crone” suddenly
turned on him with an angry scowl and said:
“If thou canst not keep a civil tongue in thy head, I’ll bring a
thousand plagues upon thee, thou umnannerly boy.”
By this threat Wolf-in-the-Temple’s courage was sadly shaken. He knew
Martha’s reputation as a witch, and had no desire to test in his own
person whether rumor belied her.
“Please, mum, I beg of you,” he said, with a sudden change of tone; “my
friend Hakon Vang is bleeding to death; won’t you please help him?”
“Thy friend Hakon Vang!” cried Martha, to whom that name was very
familiar; “bring him in, as quick as thou canst, and I’ll do what I can
for him.”
Wolf-in-the-Temple put two fingers into his mouth and gave a loud
shrill whistle, which was answered from the woods, and presently the
small procession moved up to the door, carrying their wounded comrade
between them. The poor Skull-Splitter was now as white as a sheet, and
the drowsiness of his eyes and the laxness of his features showed that
help came none too early. Martha, in hot haste, grabbed a bag of herbs,
thrust it into a pot of warm water, and clapped it on the wound. Then
she began to wag her head slowly to and fro, and crooned, to a soft and
plaintive tune, words which sounded to the ears of the boys shudderingly
strange:
“I conjure in water, I conjure in lead,
I conjure with herbs that grew o’er the dead;
I conjure with flowers that I plucked, without shoon,
When the ghosts were abroad, in the wane of the moon.
I conjure with spirits of earth and air
That make the wind sigh and cry in despair;
I conjure by him within sevenfold rings
That sits and broods at the roots of things.
I conjure by him who healeth strife,
Who plants and waters the germs of life.
I conjure, I conjure, I bid thee be still,
Thou ruddy stream, thou hast flowed thy fill!
Return to thy channel and nurture his life
Till his destined measure of years be rife.”
She sang the last two lines with sudden energy; and when she removed
her hand from the wound, the blood had ceased to flow. The poor
Skull-Splitter was sleeping soundly; and his friends, shivering a little
with mysterious fears, marched up and down whispering to one another.
They set a guard of honor at the leafy couch of their wounded comrade;
intercepted the green worms and other insects that kept dropping down
upon him from the alder branches overhead, and brushed away the flies
that would fain disturb his slumbers. They were all steeped to the core
in old Norse heroism; and they enjoyed the situation hugely. All the
life about them was half blotted out; they saw it but dimly. That light
of youthful romance, which never was on sea or land, transformed all
the common things that met their vision into something strange and
wonderful. They strained their ears to catch the meaning of the song of
the birds, so that they might learn from them the secrets of the future,
as Sigurd the Volsung did, after he had slain the dragon, Fafnir. The
woods round about them were filled with dragons and fabulous beasts,
whose tracks they detected with the eyes of faith; and they started
out every morning, during the all too brief vacation, on imaginary
expeditions against imaginary monsters.
When at the end of an hour the Skull-Splitter woke from his slumber,
much refreshed, Witch-Martha bandaged his arm carefully, and Wolf-in-the
Temple (having no golden arm-rings) tossed her, with magnificent
superciliousness, his purse, which contained six cents. But she flung
it back at him with such force that he had to dodge with more adroitness
than dignity.
“I’ll get my claws into thee some day, thou foolish lad,” she said,
lifting her lean vulture-like hand with a threatening gesture.
“No, please don’t, Martha, I didn’t mean anything,” cried the boy, in
great alarm; “you’ll forgive me, won’t you, Martha?”
“I’ll bid thee begone, and take thy foolish tongue along with thee,” she
answered, in a mollified tone.
And the Sons of the Vikings, taking the hint, shouldered the litter once
more, and reached Skull-Splitter’s home in time for supper.