from the demons
who obeyed her as she did in her own existence.

All her happiness, all that had filled her joyous soul with freshly
awakened hopes, now lay shattered at her feet, and sobbing aloud she
threw herself down beside the old woman and buried her beautiful face in
her lap.

Completely overwhelmed by the great misfortune which had come upon her,
without thinking of the vengeance which had just made her hold her head
so proudly erect, or the rare delight which a later full moon was to
bring, she remained motionless, while the old woman, who loved her and
who remembered an hour in the distant past when she herself had been
dissolved in tears at the prediction of another prophetess, laid her
trembling hand upon her head.

Let the child weep her fill.

Time, perhaps vengeance also, cured many a heartache, and when they had
accomplished this office upon the girl who had once been betrothed to
her grandson, perhaps the full moon bringing happiness, whose appearance
first the cords, then the wine mirror in the bottom of the vessel had
predicted, would come to Ledscha, and she believed she knew at whose
side the girl could regain what she had twice lost--satisfaction for the
young heart that yearned for love.

"Only wait, wait," she cried at last, repeating the consoling words
again and again, till Ledscha raised her tear-stained face.

Impulse urged her to kiss the sufferer, but as she bent over the mourner
the copper dish slipped from her knees and fell rattling on the floor.

Ledscha started up in terror, and at the same moment the Alexandrian's
packs of hounds on the shore opposite to the Owl's Nest began to bark
so loudly that the deaf old woman heard the baying as if it came from a
great distance; but the girl ran out into the open air and, returning
at the end of a few minutes, called joyously to the sorceress from the
threshold, "They are coming!"

"They, they," faltered Tabus, hurriedly pushing her disordered gray hair
under the veil on the back of her head, while exclaiming, scarcely able
to use her voice in her joyous excitement: "I knew it. He keeps his
word. My Satabus is coming. The ducks, the bread, the fish, girl! Good,
loyal heart."

Then a wide, long shadow fell across the dimly lighted room, and from
the darkened threshold a strangely deep, gasping peal of laughter rang
from a man's broad breast.

"Satabus! My boy!" the witch's shriek rose above the peculiar sound.

"Mother!" answered