r
haste to produce their ripened fruit. All nature knew not what to do,
man least of all.

In those days when a single good word spoken in season, a single lucid
idea might have meant the saving of many lives, the sole prophet in the
whole country-side was this crazy old woman, who, in the dolorous
exaltation of her deranged mind, sometimes blindly blurted out things on
which the future was to impress the seal of truth. But, for the most
part, her multitudinous, ambiguous utterances might be interpreted this
way or that, according to the liking of her hearers, and obscured rather
than revealed the future.

When the summer came, with its terribly hot days, the woman's madness
seemed to culminate in downright frenzy, for whole nights together she
went shrieking through the village. The dogs crept forth from under the
gates to meet her, and she sat down beside them, put her arms round
their heads, and they would howl together in hideous unison. Then she
would go into the houses weeping and moaning, and would ask for a glass
of water, and would moisten her hands and her eyes therewith. In some of
the houses she would simply say: "Why don't you smoke the room out,
there's a vile odour of death in it;" in other places she would ask for
a Prayer Book, and would fold down the page at the Office of Prayers for
the Dead. Or she would send messages to the other world through people
who were on their legs hale and hearty, and would tell them not to
forget these messages.

"Get a cross made for you!" was her most usual greeting. And woe betide
the family into whose windows she cried: "Get two crosses made! Get
three made! One for yourself, one for your wife, one for each of your
sons and each of your daughters!"

The people lived in desperate expectation; they would have run away had
they known whither to run.

And what then were the wise and learned doing all this time, they who
knew right well that a mortal danger was approaching; for they had read
of its ravages, they had looked upon the very face of it in pictures,
they knew the pace at which it was travelling day by day--what did they
do to soothe the anguish of the people, and inspire them with confidence
in the tender mercies of God?

All they did was to have a cemetery ready dug for those who were to die
in heaps in the course of the year.

CHAPTER II.

THE HEADSMAN'S FAMILY.

The house of the headsman is surrounded by a stone wall, its door is
studded w