As she shrank the other followed, till presently Lysbeth saw her expression of rage and hate change to one of terror.

In another instant, muttering something about a request for alms which she did not wait to receive, the woman had wheeled round and fled away as fast as her skates would carry her--which was very fast indeed.
Turning about to find what had frightened her, Lysbeth saw standing on the bank of the mere, so close that she must have overheard every word, but behind the screen of a leafless bush, a tall, forbidding-looking woman, who held in her hand some broidered caps which apparently she was offering for sale.

These caps she began to slowly fold up and place one by one in a hide satchel that was hung about her shoulders.

All this while she was watching Lysbeth with her keen black eyes, except when from time to time she took them off her to follow the flight of that person who had called herself the Mare.
"You keep ill company, lady," said the cap-seller in a harsh voice.
"It was none of my seeking," answered Lysbeth, astonished into making a reply.
"So much the better for you, lady, although she seemed to know you and to know also that you would listen to her song.

Unless my eyes deceived me, which is not often, that woman is an evil-doer and a worker of magic like her dead husband Van Muyden; a heretic, a blasphemer of the Holy Church, a traitor to our Lord the Emperor, and one," she added with a snarl, "with a price upon her head that before night will, I hope, be in Black Meg's pocket." Then, walking with long firm steps towards a fat man who seemed to be waiting for her, the tall, black-eyed pedlar passed with him into the throng, where Lysbeth lost sight of them.
Lysbeth watched them go, and shivered.