"Scorner! Beware! The curse of the crimson hand is upon you!"
--"'I smell the blood of an Englishman'"--continued Cap.
"Derider of the fates, you are foredoomed to crime!"
--"'Be he alive or be he dead, I'll have his brains to butter my
bread!'" concluded Cap.
"Be silent!" shrieked the beldame.
"I won't!" said Cap. "Because you see, if we are in for the
horrible, I can beat you hollow at that!"
"'Avaunt! and quit my sight!
Let the earth hide thee!
Thy bones are marrowless! Thy blood is cold!
Thou hast no speculation in those eyes
Which thou dost glare with?'"
"Begone! You're doomed! doomed! doomed!" shrieked the witch,
retreating into her hut.
Cap laughed and stroked the neck of her horse, saying:
"Gyp, my son, that was old Nick's wife, who was with us just this
instant, and now, indeed, Gyp, if we are to see the Hidden House
this afternoon, we must get on!"
And so saying she followed the path that wound half-way around the
Punch Bowl and then along the side of a little mountain torrent
called the Spout, which, rising in an opposite mountain, leaped from
rock to rock, with many a sinuous turn, as it wound through the
thicket that immediately surrounded the Hidden House until it
finally jetted through a subterranean channel into the Devil's Punch
Bowl.
Capitola was now, unconsciously, upon the very spot, where,
seventeen years before, the old nurse had been forcibly stopped and
compelled to attend the unknown lady.
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