anced at the thing where it stood; an old cupboard in two
sections, that they knew well.

"You look surprised. Oh, if I could only tell you...."

She gazed upwards in silence, as if praying for strength. Then, with a
strange light in her eyes, she turned towards them and went on almost
in a whisper, as one who tells a tale of ghosts:

"It was long ago. In this very room, on this very bed here lay a woman
who had borne a man-child but four days before. She had always been
tender and faithful and obedient to her husband, and had tried to do
his will in everything. And she had been happy, very happy. But before
the child was born, a suspicion had begun to grow up secretly in her
mind. And now, on the fifth night, as she lay there with the newborn
child, in the pale light from a lamp on the shelf of the cupboard
there, the fear at her heart grew all of a sudden so strong that she
got up, and went into the next room, to see if what she dreaded was
true...."

The sick woman turned her face to the wall, to hide the tears that
forced themselves into her eyes.

"But the one she sought was not there, and driven by fear, she crossed
the courtyard, barefooted, and half-clad as she was, in the cold, over
to the still-room. They used to make spirits at home in those days.
She opened the door softly and looked in. There the fire was burning,
and by the flickering light she saw a woman--a young woman then--lying
on a bed, and beside her the man she herself had risen from her
childbed to seek. And at the sight of them her heart died in her. She
would have cried aloud, but only a groan came from her lips, and she
went back, dreading at every step lest her legs should fail her...."

The sick woman gasped for breath, and lay trembling; the listeners sat
as if turned to stone.

"How she got back," went on the old woman, "she did not know herself;
only there she was, sitting on the bed beside her child, pressing her
hands to her breast, that felt as if it would burst. Then she heard
footsteps outside, and a moment later the door opened, and with a roar
like a wild beast, a man strode in--furious, with bloodshot eyes.
He uttered a dreadful curse, and swung up an axe above his head. The
woman almost fainted with fright. Then behind him she saw her sister
reaching up with a cry of horror towards the axe he held. It flew from
his hand, the steel shone in the lamplight--and what happened after
she did not know...."

It was as if the axe