rew a fluttering,
flickering light like those of ruddy flapping wings against the walls,
and wearied still more my dropping eyelids.

Lost in a dreamy slumber, I was half opening my eyes to see the cause of
these alternate lights and shadows, but the strangest sight surprised me.

Close by the hearth, hardly revealed by the feeble light of a few dying
embers, I recognised with dismay the dark profile of the Black Plague!

She sat upon a low stool, and was evidently warming herself.

At first I thought myself deceived by my senses, which would have been
natural enough after the exciting scenes of the last few days; I raised
myself upon my elbow, gazing with my eyes starting with fear and horror.

It was she indeed! I lay horrified, for there she sat calm and immovable,
with her hands clasped over her skinny knees, just as I had seen her in
the snow, with her long scraggy neck outstretched, her hooked nose, her
compressed lips.

How had the Black Pest got here? How had she found her way into this high
tower crowning the dangerous precipices? Everything that Sperver had told
me of this mysterious being seemed to be coming true! And now the
unaccountable behaviour of Lieverle, growling so fiercely against the
wall, seemed clear as the daylight. I huddled myself close up into the
alcove, hardly daring to breathe, and staring upon this motionless
profile just as a mouse out of its hole fixes its paralysed stare upon
the cat that is watching for it.

The old woman stirred no more than the rock-hewn pillars on each side of
the hearthstone, and her lips were mumbling inarticulate sounds.

My heart was palpitating, my fears increased momentarily during the long
silence, made more startling by the motionless supernatural figure that
sat there before me.

This had lasted a quarter of an hour when, the fire catching a splinter
of fir-wood, a flash of light broke out, the shaving twisted and flamed,
and a few rays of light flared to the end of the room.

That luminous jet was sufficient to show me that the creature was clothed
in an old dress of rich purple silk as stiff as cardboard, with a violet
pattern; there was a massive bracelet upon her left wrist, and a gold
arrow stuck through her thick grey hair twisted over the back of her
head. It was like an apparition out of the ages past.

Still the Plague could have had no hostile intentions towards me, or
she might easily have taken advantage of my sleep to have put them