Page:The Story and Song of Black Roderick.djvu/22

14 eyes, drawn by some other eyes, rested on a hollow by a stone. There he saw gazing at him the whiskered face of a red weasel, looking without pity, without fear.

‘Evil beast!’ said the Black Earl, glad to speak, for the silence of all the listening things who watched him made his heart beat with unwonted quickness, and he knew they were so many silent judges reading the evil of his soul. ‘Get thee gone,’ quoth the Black Earl. ‘Darest thou gaze upon me without fear?’

But the red weasel, resting at the doorway of his hole, did not blink a lid of his sharp eyes.

‘Who art thou that evil should droop ashamed before thee?’ said a voice, and the Black Earl turned as though a stone had struck him.

Now, when he looked east and west, no one could he see, but when he turned him south, there among the trees he saw an old, bent woman gathering herbs. He turned his horse and, full of rage, drove it towards her.