"Then all her fury suddenly subsided, and she became calm and resolute
unto death. She assured him that she never would leave the house; that
she was his wife, and the house's mistress; and she had the right to
remain, and would remain. Whereupon he broke out into furious oaths,
swearing that if she did not go, he would put her out by force. Then she
answered, in these memorable words, that have come down to us in
tradition: "'My body you may thrust forth from my home, but my spirit never! Living
or dead, in the flesh or the spirit, I will stay in this house as long
as its walls shall stand! Nay, though you were to pull this house down
to eject me, in the flesh or the spirit, I would enter in and possess
the next house you should build! And should you venture to bring here,
or there, a bride to supplant me, in the flesh or the spirit I will
blast and destroy her. So help me the gods of my people.' "For a moment the ruthless and dauntless man stood appalled by the awful
spirit he had raised in that slight form. But when he did recover
himself it was to fall into a transport of fury, in which he seized the
girl and hurled her violently through the open window. Fortunately they
were on the ground floor, so the fall was not great, and she was,
besides, light in form and agile as a cat. She fell on her hands and
feet upon a thick carpet of the dead leaves that strewed the lawn.
"For a moment she lay where she had fallen, breathless from the shock;
then she lifted herself slowly up. One arm hung useless by her side; it
was dislocated at the shoulder joint; but the other was raised to
heaven, and she muttered some words in her native tongue, and then
turned and walked away until she disappeared in the woods.
"'I hope she'll drown herself according to rule, and there will be an
end,' the fiendish wretch was heard to mutter. No one was allowed to
follow her. She probably did drown herself, but that was by no means
the end. Well, the gipsy girl is said to have kept her word.
"The third day thereafter, as a boy in search of eagle's eggs was
climbing the highest fastnesses of the Black Mountain, his eyes were
attracted by the glow of something scarlet lying on a ledge of rocks
about half way down the course of the Black Torrent. Agile as any
chamois hunter of the Alps, the boy let himself down, from point to
point, until he reached the ledge, upon which the dead body of the gipsy
girl was found. It was crushed by the fall, and sodden by the white foam
of the cascade that continually rolled over it.