At this the man started and called out, “Good Lord, she is clean off her head. Stolen Othmar’s voice! What can the wench mean? Why, girl, that snake might bite you, and you would be dead at once. Why on earth should you carry it because it has killed a girl?”
“I am carrying it because the fool told me to do what the raven does,” answered Hulda, “and he has still a worm in his mouth. Look.”
At this the man burst out laughing. “Why, what has that to do with you?” he cried; “a raven will often carry a worm for a bit. Drop this snake at once, you silly lass, or, better still, hold it firm while I crush its head with my poker.” And he seized the poker to kill it with.
Then Hulda was frightened lest he might steal the snake from her, or kill it by force, and she ran on; but she ran in such haste that she stumbled against the baker who was just coming out from his shop with his basket of loaves on his arm.
“Can’t you look where you are going?” he cried in anger, as he picked up the bread which had rolled into the road; and then, seeing it was Hulda, he said:—“Why, who are you running away from, my girl? Are you on the lookout for more fools that you can’t see when an honest man comes along? And whatever have you got there?”
“It is only a snake I have found,” said Hulda, when she had asked the man’s pardon, and she tried to hide the snake in her skirt, but the baker seized her arm and made her show it to him.
“What on earth are you carrying a live snake with you for?” he asked. “Don’t you know they are venomous beasts, and the bite of one is certain death?” And, like the cake-maker, he tried to wrench the snake from her. At this Hulda was terribly frightened.
“If they take the snake from me,” she thought, “then my last chance is gone,” and she tried to free herself from the baker, but he seized her by the skirt and held her fast, and shouted out to others to come and help him.
“Help, help!” he cried. “Here is a poor mad girl, and she has got hold of a poisonous adder, and she will let it loose in the village and it will bite some of our children and kill them.” And when they heard his cry the villagers all came running out of their cottages.
“Let me go, let me go,” shrieked Hulda, “it will do no harm. I will hold it tight, and I would not lose it for the wide world.”
“I tell you she is mad,” roared the baker, and the cake-maker came up and said the same thing. “She wandered by here some time back, and all she wanted to know was where she could find another as mad as herself, but she will have far to go before she meets one, I reckon. We must secure her and take the snake from her, but beware how you catch it, for fear it should bite.”
And the people all gathered round her and made a great hubbub, though they were afraid to touch the snake which Hulda still held firmly in her hand. And they made such a din that the old schoolmaster came out of the schoolhouse with his pupils after him.
The people told him there was a poor mad girl who had got a snake, and would not let them take it from her, and he remembered Hulda as the others had done, and shook his head and said sadly, “I fear it is too true. The poor child is really mad, but we cannot wrench the snake from her lest it may turn and bite us. But it is certain that it would not be safe to let her go; so, as the children are all going home now, let us lock her into the schoolhouse here, till we can get something to kill the creature with, and then when the doctor comes, he can see if the poor girl is very bad, and what had better be done with her.”
Hulda turned quite white with fear, and cried out that she was not mad, and that the snake should harm no one, but they would not heed her, and pushed her into the schoolhouse, and bolted the doors on her, and there Hulda sat on the floor and cried as if her heart would break.
“Alas!” cried she, “now all hope is gone, and Othmar will be dumb forever. For what good have I carried this snake with me all this way, if now it is to be taken from me and killed?” and her tears fell on the viper as she looked at it in her hand. It was very bright green and yellow, and it kept wrinkling and twisting its skin as she grasped it, and making a loud hissing noise. As her tears were still falling she heard a croak over her head, and saw the raven perched on a window above her, and again her hopes revived.
“Maybe he has come to help me,” she thought, “for I should never have found the little dwarf if it had not been for the raven.” Then as she looked up at the raven sitting in the window, she saw that it was pecking at a piece of rope that hung through the window, and Hulda thought—“Surely if I could climb up to the window, I could scramble through it, and climb down the rope on to the ground. Only if they were to see me, they would catch me again, so I must wait till nightfall when there is no one there.”
So she sat down again and waited till the sun had set, and she trembled at every noise lest it might be someone coming to seek her,
