Atondido Stories
The woman burst into tears and explained to the stranger
that one day in the previous autumn her husband had taken out
his sheep as usual and had never come back.
"Dunay, the dog," she said, "drove home the sheep and from
that day to this nothing has ever been heard of my poor hus-
band. I suppose a wolf devoured him, or the witches caught him
and tore him to pieces and scattered him over the mountain.
And here I am left, a poor forsaken widow! Oh dear, oh dear, oh
dear!"
Her grief was so great that Batcha leaped out of the sheep-
fold to comfort her.
"There, there, dear wife, don't cry! Here I am, alive and well!
No wolf ate me, no witches caught me. I've been asleep in the
sheepfold—that's all. I must have slept all winter long!"
At sight and sound of her husband, the woman stopped cry-
ing. Her grief changed to surprise, then to fury.
"You wretch!" she cried. "You lazy, good-for-nothing loafer!
A nice kind of shepherd you are to desert your sheep and your-
self to idle away the winter sleeping like a serpent! That's a fine
story, isn't it, and I suppose you think me fool enough to believe
it! Oh, you—you sheep's tick, where have you been and what
have you been doing?" She flew at Batcha with both hands and
there's no telling what she would have done to him if the
stranger hadn't interfered.
"There, there," he said, "no use getting excited! Of course he
hasn't been sleeping here in the sheepfold all winter. The ques-
tion is, where has he been? Here is some money for you. Take it
and go along home to your cottage in the valley. Leave Batcha to
me and I promise you I'll get the truth out of him."
The woman abused her husband some more and then, pock-
eting the money, went off.
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