them in his wrath. He
dared them in the name of God to touch him or his wife, and as he did
so he says that he felt the chill grow upon him. It took him, he said,
in the legs and ran up his body. It stiffened his arms till they felt
as if they must snap under the strain; it caught him in the neck and
fixed it. He felt his eyes grow stiff and hard; he felt himself sway.
"Then," he said, "the dark swam over me, the dark and the bitter cold,
and I knew nothing more." Questioned as he was by Mr. Robson and his
friends, he declared that it was at the name of God the cold got him
first. He saw the women hushed and scared, and at the same time one of
them looked over her shoulder, as if somebody was coming. Had he
called in the King of the Wood? That is what he himself thought. It
was the King of the Wood who had come in quest of Mabilla, had pulled
her out of the cottage in Dryhope and frozen her in the forest. It was
he, no doubt, said Andrew King, who had come to defy the Christian
and his God. I detect here the inspiration of his mother Miranda, the
strange sea-woman who knew Mabilla without mortal knowledge and spoke
to her in no mortal speech. But the sequel to the tale is a strange
one.

Andrew King awoke to find himself in Mabilla's arms, to hear for the
first time in his life Mabilla call him softly by his name. "Andrew,
my husband," she called him, and when he opened his eyes in wonder to
hear her she said, "Andrew, take me home now. It is all over," or
words to that effect. They went along the forest and up and down the
fells together. The wind had dropped, the stars shone. And together
they took up their life where they had dropped it, with one
significant omission in its circumstance. Bessie Prawle had
disappeared from Dryhope. She had followed him up the fell on the
night of the storm, but she came not back. And they say that she never
did. Nothing was found of her body, though search was made; but a comb
she used to wear was picked up, they say, by the tarn on Limmer Fell,
an imitation tortoise-shell comb which used to hold up her hair.
Miranda King, who knew more than she would ever tell, had a shrewd
suspicion of the truth of the case. But Andrew King knew nothing, and
I daresay cared very little. He had his wood-wife, and she had her
voice; and between them, I believe, they had a child within the year.

I ought to add that I have, with these eyes, seen Mabilla By-the-Wood
who became Mabilla King. When I wen