“Now,” said the Mare, when she had finished reading, “tell me before you sleep, what it was that brought you into the waters of the Haarlemer Meer, and what that Spanish man has done to you. Do not be afraid, for though I am mad, or so they say, I can keep counsel, and between you and me are many bonds, Carolus van Hout’s daughter, some of which you know and see, and some that you can neither know nor see, but which God will weave in His own season.”
Lysbeth looked at the weird countenance, distorted and made unhuman by long torment of body and mind, and found in it something to trust; yes, even signs of that sympathy which she so sorely needed. So she told her all the tale from the first word of it to the last.
The Mare listened in silence, for no story of evil perpetrated by a Spaniard seemed to move or astonish her, only when Lysbeth had done, she said:
“Ah! child, had you but known of me, and where to find me, you should have asked my aid.”
“Why, mother, what could you have done?” answered Lysbeth.
“Done? I would have followed him by night until I found my chance in some lonely place, and there I would have——” Then she stretched out her bony hand to the red light of the fire, and Lysbeth saw that in it was a knife.
“Why are you frightened, my pretty lady?” asked the Mare. “I tell you that I live on for only one thing—to kill Spaniards, yes, priests first and then the others. Oh! I have a long count to pay; for every time that he was tortured a life, for every groan he uttered at the stake a life; yes, so many for the father and half as many for the son. Well, I shall live to be old, I know that I shall live to be old, and the count will be discharged, ay, to the last stiver.”
As she spoke, the outlawed Water Wife had risen, and the flare of the fire struck full upon her. It was an awful face that Lysbeth beheld by the light of it, full of fierceness and energy, the face of an inspired avenger, dread and unnatural, yet not altogether repulsive. Indeed, that countenance was such as an imaginative artist might give to one of the beasts in the Book of Revelation. Amazed and terrified, Lysbeth said nothing.
“I frighten you, gentle one,” went on the Mare, “you who, although you have suffered, are still full of the milk of human kindness. Wait, woman, wait till they have murdered the man you love, till your heart is like my heart, and you also live on, not for love’s sake, not for life’s sake, but to be a Sword, a Sword, a Sword in the hand of God!”