To get over it Byrne began to talk, saying that he was an Englishman, and that he was in search of a countryman who ought to have passed this way.  Directly he had spoken the recollection of his parting with Tom came up in his mind with amazing vividness:  the silent villagers, the angry gnome, the one-eyed wine-seller, Bernardino.  Why!  These two unspeakable frights must be that man’s aunts—­affiliated to the devil.

Whatever they had been once it was impossible to imagine what use such feeble creatures could be to the devil, now, in the world of the living.  Which was Lucilla and which was Erminia?  They were now things without a name.  A moment of suspended animation followed Byrne’s words.  The sorceress with the spoon ceased stirring the mess in the iron pot, the very trembling of the other’s head stopped for the space of breath.  In this infinitesimal fraction of a second Byrne had the sense of being really on his quest, of having reached the turn of the path, almost within hail of Tom.

“They have seen him,” he thought with conviction.  Here was at last somebody who had seen him.  He made sure they would deny all knowledge of the Ingles; but on the contrary they were eager to tell him that he had eaten and slept the night in the house.  They both started talking together, describing his appearance and behaviour.  An excitement quite fierce in its feebleness possessed them.  The doubled-up sorceress flourished aloft her wooden spoon, the puffy monster got off her stool and screeched, stepping from one foot to the other, while the trembling of her head was accelerated to positive vibration.  Byrne was quite disconcerted by their excited behaviour. . .  Yes!  The big, fierce Ingles went away in the morning, after eating a piece of bread and drinking some wine.  And if the caballero wished to follow the same path nothing could be easier—­in the morning.

“You will give me somebody to show me the way?” said Byrne.

“Si, senor.  A proper youth.  The man the caballero saw going out.”

“But he was knocking at the door,” protested Byrne.  “He only bolted when he saw me.  He was coming in.”

“No!  No!” the two horrid witches screamed out together.  “Going out.  Going out!”

After all it may have been true.  The sound of knocking had been faint, elusive, reflected Byrne.  Perhaps only the effect of his fancy.  He asked —

“Who is that man?”

“Her novio.”  They screamed pointing to the girl.  “He is gone home to a village far away from here.  But he will return in the morning.  Her novio!  And she is an orphan—­the child of poor Christian people.  She lives with us for the love of God, for the love of God.”

The orphan crouching on the corner of the hearth had been looking at Byrne.  He thought that she was more like a child of Satan kept there by these two weird harridans for the love of the Devil.  Her eyes were a little oblique, her mouth rather thick, but admirably formed; her dark face had a wild beauty, voluptuous and untamed.  As to the character of her steadfast gaze attached upon him with a sensuously savage attention, “to know what it was like,” says Mr. Byrne, “you have only to observe a hungry cat watching a bird in a cage or a mouse inside a trap.”