stay long with us.  Just as she came, so she went, but she took with her my love for Stephen.  Because I was so wild and always did something wrong, my wise father had to punish me often; but Stephen was never punished because he always did what was pleasing in the sight of father and mother.  From that time on I always remembered the words of the great-aunt that I was punished and he not because they loved him, and his mother interceded for him, and there was no one to stand by me.  But my step-mother quite often interceded for me.  She was a kind woman and never did me any harm, but I wanted her to show more love to me than to her own boy.  But that could not be.  This wrong thought grew in my heart, and my envy increased from year to year till we were about as old as you two boys; and now comes the sad part which I never shall forget, and that is what is pressing me to the earth unto today.”

Bacha pointed over to the mountain opposite them.

“Do you see yonder mountain?” The boys nodded.

“There we used to live at the foot of the mountain.  Look toward the West, where the sun is lying down to sleep; there in the valley lived the weavers, to whom from all our homes, the wool was carried to be woven.  Two paths led to those huts; the one up and down over the rocks—­the other through the valley, easier but more dangerous, because there was a stretch of swamp into which, if somebody fell, he could never get out by himself.  One who knew how, could get over by jumping from rock to rock and to clumps of grass, but it seemed as if some black power wanted to pull one down.

“Once our parents had us carry our wool.  Going, we went the upper way, as we were told, but after we delivered the wool to the weavers, Stephen handed me an apple, which the weaver’s wife had given him, saying he had another in his bag from his mother.  Mother gave me nothing for the journey because I didn’t take leave of her, and she didn’t even see me when I grabbed my bag.  And now, even the weaver’s wife had not given me anything.  It made me sad.  I got angry, threw the apple away, and would rather have cried.  Here was evidence, I thought, that what the great-aunt said was true.  Nobody cared for me, at home, nor anywhere else.  Everybody liked Stephen, and it always would be so.

“I used to hear some people say that the Devil is walking on the earth, though we do not see him, and whispers to us what we should think and do.  If it is true, I don’t know, but that he was with me that time and gave me bad, gruesome advice, is sure.  Only he could have told me that.  When we left the weavers, I said to Stephen, ’Going over the mountain is too far.  Let us go by the lower and more convenient path; it is nearer.’

“‘But mother said we must go only over the hill,’ objected Stephen, ’and father called also from the yard, ‘Do not go by the lower way.’”

“Well, however it was, when we came where the paths divided we went on the lower path anyway.  I claimed that my feet hurt, I had stubbed my big toe, and had a thorn in my heel.  Stephen was sorry for me, and thought that when we explained it to mother she would see the reason, and father also, why we took the lower path after all.