ions with a staff, making him rear
high. She saw him make the other stand with the command that was in his
voice. She ran to the river, but she slipped on the stepping-stones;
she fell down and she felt the water flowing upon her. The man came and
lifting her up carried her to her own side of the river. Across the bog
he carried her, and when she looked at him she saw the lean face and
eyes blue like gentian-flowers--she saw the face of the man who was
called the Hunter-King. He left her on the ground when they passed the
bog, and she went on her way without speaking.

Nothing of this no more than of anything else that happened to her, or
anything that she thought of, did Sheen tell the Spae-Woman. But she
wished and she wished that the Hunter-King might come past while there
was a light in the house and step within and talk to the Spae-Woman, so
that she herself, while spinning the thread, could hear his voice and
listen to the things he talked about. She often stood at the door and
watched across the bog to see if anything was coming to her.

A neighbor-woman came across the door-step one evening and Sheen went
into the house after her, for she felt that something was going to be
told. There was a dead man in a house. He had been found in the wood. He
was known as the Hunter-King. Sheen stood at her bed and heard what the
neighbor-woman said.

The Hunter-King was being waked in the neighbor-woman's house, and her
eldest daughter had been the corpse-watcher the first night. In the
morning they found that the girl's hand had been withered. The woman's
second daughter was the corpse-watcher the second night and her right
hand had been left trembling. This was the third and last night that the
Hunter-King would be waked, and to-night there was no one to watch his
corpse.

Sheen thought that nothing would ever happen in the world again, now
that the Hunter-King was dead. She thought that there was no loneliness
so great as that of his corpse with no one to watch it on the last
strange night it would be above ground. The neighbor-woman went from the
Spae-Woman and Sheen went after her. She was standing on the door-step
of her house. "Oh, colleen," said the neighbor-woman, "I am wanting
a girl to watch a corpse in my house to-night--the third and the last
night for watching. Will you watch and I will give you a comb for your
hair?" Sheen showed that she would serve the woman and she went into the
wake-house. At first she