go, then?" I asked.

"No one sleeps in my house two nights together!" she answered.

"I thank you, then, for your hospitality, and bid you farewell!" I said,
and turned to go.

"The time will come when you must house with me many days and many
nights," she murmured sadly through her muffling.

"Willingly," I replied.

"Nay, NOT willingly!" she answered.

I said to myself that she was right--I would not willingly be her guest
a second time! but immediately my heart rebuked me, and I had scarce
crossed the threshold when I turned again.

She stood in the middle of the room; her white garments lay like foamy
waves at her feet, and among them the swathings of her face: it was
lovely as a night of stars. Her great gray eyes looked up to heaven;
tears were flowing down her pale cheeks. She reminded me not a little
of the sexton's wife, although the one looked as if she had not wept for
thousands of years, and the other as if she wept constantly behind the
wrappings of her beautiful head. Yet something in the very eyes that
wept seemed to say, "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in
the morning."

I had bowed my head for a moment, about to kneel and beg her
forgiveness, when, looking up in the act, I found myself outside a
doorless house. I went round and round it, but could find no entrance.

I had stopped under one of the windows, on the point of calling aloud my
repentant confession, when a sudden wailing, howling scream invaded my
ears, and my heart stood still. Something sprang from the window above
my head, and lighted beyond me. I turned, and saw a large gray cat, its
hair on end, shooting toward the river-bed. I fell with my face in the
sand, and seemed to hear within the house the gentle sobbing of one who
suffered but did not repent.

CHAPTER XVI. A GRUESOME DANCE

I rose to resume my journey, and walked many a desert mile. How I longed
for a mountain, or even a tall rock, from whose summit I might see
across the dismal plain or the dried-up channels to some bordering hope!
Yet what could such foresight have availed me? That which is within a
man, not that which lies beyond his vision, is the main factor in what
is about to befall him: the operation upon him is the event. Foreseeing
is not understanding, else surely the prophecy latent in man would come
oftener to the surface!

The sun was half-way to the horizon when I saw before me a rugged rocky
ascent; but ere I reached it my desi