curred in Jacob’s home. A neighbor woman stopped in to see the convalescent and found her lying near the fireplace half dead. She gave the alarm, and the women came running hither, including the midwife, who resuscitated Bára. They learned from her that she was cooking her husband’s dinner and, forgetting that a woman, after confinement, must never emerge from her room precisely at noon or after the Angelus, remained standing in the kitchen under the chimney and went on cooking. And then, she said, something rustled past her ears like an evil wind, spots floated before her eyes, something seemed to pull her by the hair and felled her to the floor.
“That was the noon-witch!” they all cried.
“Let us see if she has not exchanged a strange child for your Bára,” one of them suggested and ran to the cradle. At once they all crowded around and took the baby from the cradle, unwrapped and examined it. One of them said: “It is a changeling, it is, surely! It has such big eyes!” Another cried, “She has a large head!” A third passed judgment on the child as having short legs, and each had something different to say. The mother was frightened, but the midwife after conscientiously examining the babe decided that it was Bára’s very own child. Nevertheless, more than one of the old gossips continued to insist that the child was a changeling left there by the witch who appears at midday.
After that mishap Jacob’s wife somehow never re-
