“Why?”

“Oh, I guess it started with the pigs.  No, let’s see:  first about the trees.  Da chopped off a lot of Elm trees that looked terrible nice from her windy.  She’s awful queer about a tree.  She hates to see ’em cut down, an’ that soured her same as if she owned ’em.  Then there wuz the pigs.  You see, one winter she was awful hard up, an’ she had two pigs worth, maybe, $5.00 each—­anyway, she said they was, an’ she ought to know, for they lived right in the shanty with her—­an’ she come to Da (I guess she had tried every one else first) an’ Da he squeezed her down an’ got the two pigs for $7.00.  He al’ays does that.  Then he comes home an’ says to Ma, ’Seems to me the old lady is pretty hard put.  ’Bout next Saturday you take two sacks of flour and some pork an’ potatoes around an’ see that she is fixed up right.’  Da’s al’ays doin’ them things, too, on the quiet.  So Ma goes with about $15.00 worth o’ truck.  The old witch was kinder ‘stand off.’  She didn’t say much.  Ma was goin’ slow, not knowin’ just whether to give the stuff out an’ out, or say it could be worked for next year, or some other year, when there was two moons, or some time when the work was all done.  Well, the old witch said mighty little until the stuff was all put in the cellar, then she grabs up a big stick an’ breaks out at Ma: 

“‘Now you git out o’ my house, you dhirty, sthuck-up thing.  I ain’t takin’ no charity from the likes o’ you.  That thing you call your husband robbed me o’ my pigs, an’ we ain’t any more’n square now, so git out an’ don’t you dar set fut in my house agin’.

“Well, she was sore on us when Da bought her pigs, but she was five times wuss after she clinched the groceries.  ’Pears like they soured on her stummick.”

“What a shame, the old wretch,” said Yan, with ready sympathy for the Raftens.

“No,” replied Sam; “she’s only queer.  There’s lots o’ folk takes her side.  But she’s awful queer.  She won’t have a tree cut if she can help it, an’ when the flowers come in the spring she goes out in the woods and sets down beside ’em for hours an’ calls ’em ’Me beauty—­me little beauty,’ an’ she just loves the birds.  When the boys want to rile her they get a sling-shot an’ shoot the birds in her garden an’ she just goes crazy.  She pretty near starves herself every winter trying to feed all the birds that come around.  She has lots of ’em to feed right out o’ her hand.  Da says they think its an old pine root, but she has a way o’ coaxin’ ’em that’s awful nice.  There she’ll stand in freezin’ weather calling them ‘Me beauties’.

“You see that little windy in the end?” he continued, as they came close to the witch’s hut.  “Well, that’s the loft, an’ it’s full o’ all sorts o’ plants an’ roots.”

“What for?”

“Oh, for medicine.  She’s great on hairbs.”

“Oh, yes, I remember now Biddy did say that her Granny was a herb doctor.”

“Doctor?  She ain’t much of a doctor, but I bet she knows every plant that grows in the woods, an’ they’re sure strong after they’ve been up there for a year, with the cat sleepin’ on them.”