the husband listened to the dreadful tale, but he could not believe his gentle daughter guilty of such an evil act. he knew that by popular superstition people believed that one person could cause the gradual death of another by making an image of the hated one and cursing it daily; but where had his young daughter learned such knowledge? the thing was impossible. yet he remembered having noticed that his daughter stayed much in her room of late and kept herself away from every one, even when visitors came to the house. putting this fact together with his wife's alarm, he thought that there might be something to account for the strange story.