Page:Christmas Fireside Stories.djvu/316

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304 The Witch. corpse-spell comes from the churchyard. Just look yourself in the bowl here : there stands a coffin and there is a church steeple, and in the coffin Iles a corpse, spreadingout its fingers," said the sorceress with great importance, as she explained these mystic figures of the melted lead.

    • Humph, — but there is a remedy ! " she mumbled to herself again,

but sufficiently lovd to be heard by the other. " What remedy is that ? " asked the mother, both glad and curious. " There's a remedy, — it does try one, but never mmd," said Gubjor ; " I shall make a dummy baby, which I shall bury in the churchyard, and then the dead will believe they have got the child, — take my word, they won't know but what it is the real baby ! But wc must have some family silver to go with it ! Have you gotany?" " Yes, I have a couple of old silver coins, which were given me when I was baptized, and I didn't want to touch them ;—but if life depends upon it " said the anxious mother, and she began at once searching in an old chest. "Yes, — one I shall put in the hill, — the other in water, —the third I shall bury in consecrated ground, where the disease was caught. I must have three in all," said the sorceress, " and some old rags to make a dummy of." She got what she asked for. A big doll was soon made up in the shape of a wrapped-up baby. The sorceress rose from her seat, took the dummy baby and her stick, and said : "Fm going now to the churchyard to bury it. The third Thurs day from to-day I shall be back again, — then we'll see ! I f there is going to be life, you can see yourself in the pupils of the child's eye, biu: if he is going to die you'll see something black and nothing else. And now I must be off to Joramo. I haven't becn there for alongtime;butthey sent wordto metocome and see a youngster who has got the troll-spell. But that's an easy matter ! I*ll push him under a piece of turf the contrary way to which the sun goes, and then hell be a man again." "Dear me, dear me!" said the peasant woman admiringly,,