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about—about Jenny Adams.”
    â€œOh, yes? What about her?” said Biddy, cheerfully and sharply.
    â€œWell,” said Jess, feeling very silly, “she—er—she can’t walk, you know.”
    Biddy shook her head at Jess and answered, quite kindly, “Now, my dear, that’s not really accurate, is it? She can walk quite well. I’ve seen her limping about rather nimbly, considering.”
    Jess felt so foolish that she hung her head down and could not say a word. Frank had to clear his throat and reply. “Yes, we know,” he said. “But her foot’s bad all the same, and she says you put the evil eye on her.” He felt this was such a monstrous thing to say to Biddy that his face and his eyes—even his hands—became all hot and fat as he said it.
    And Biddy nodded again. “Yes, my dear. She’s quite right. I did. I have it in for that family, you know.”
    Jess’s head came up. Frank went suddenly from hot and fat to cold and thin with horror, that anyone could talk as calmly and cheerfully as Biddy about a thing like that. “Why?” he said.
    â€œHow unfair!” said Jess.
    â€œNot at all,” said Biddy. “One has one’s reasons. I have to get my Own Back, you know.”
    â€œBut look here,” said Frank, “she’s only a little kid, and she’s had it for a year now. Couldn’t you take it off her?”
    â€œPlease,” Jess added.
    Biddy, smiling and shaking her head, began shuffling back into her hut. “I’m sorry, my dears. It’s none of your business.”
    â€œYou’re wrong,” said Jess. “It is our business—exactly. Please take it off.”
    Biddy stopped for a moment, in the doorway of her hut. “Then, if it is your business,” she said briskly, “I suggest you give me a wide berth, my dears. It would be wisest. Because, I assure you, Jenny Adams is not likely to walk freely until she has her heirloom in her hands. Which, in plain language, is never . So I suggest you leave the matter there.”
    Biddy shut the door of her hut in their faces with a brisk snap, and left Frank and Jess staring at each other.

THREE
    The first thing they did was to get themselves out of Biddy’s bare patch and back to the path again. There, halfway to the footbridge, Jess stopped.
    â€œHow awful!” she said. “How terrible! Oh, Frank, Biddy Iremonger must be quite, quite mad after all. She ought to be put in a Home.”
    Frank did nothing but mumble. His skin was up in goose pimples all over, and he did not trust himself to speak. All he wanted to do was to go away quickly. He hurried on along the path toward the bridge.
    Jess followed him, saying, “Of course, she may have been having us on. Mummy says she’s got a strange sense of humor.”
    Frank again said nothing. It seemed plain enough to him that Biddy had meant what she said, and if Biddy believed herself to be a witch, he could hardly blame the Adams girls for thinking so, too. Mad or not, it did not seem to matter. Perhaps witches were mad, anyway. What did matter was what they were going to tell Frankie and Jenny, because it looked as if Own Back had let them down. He was wondering just what they would say when Jess grabbed at his arm.
    â€œOh, dear! Listen, Frank.”
    There were voices, distant, but getting nearer, loud and crude, and the sound of wheels and sticks. Buster Knell and his gang were in the field on the other side of the river somewhere. Jess and Frank bundled along to where the bridge began. The river took a bend here, which allowed you to look up along the opposite bank. There they could see the gang coming along the bank toward the bridge in a noisy group, about twenty yards above Biddy’s hut. They could hear, not clearly, slimy and disemboweled language.
    Frank slid quickly down the bank beside the bridge, where there was a tiny beach of gravel. He was