n her chin curled down on her
great neck. Bles shuddered and stepped back.

"Is you afeared, honey?" she whispered.

"No," he said sturdily.

She chuckled drily. "Yes, you is--everybody's 'feared of old Elspeth;
but she won't hurt you--you's got the spell;" and wheeling again, she
was back at the fire.

"But the seed?" he ventured.

She pointed impressively roofward. "The dark of the moon, boy, the dark
of the moon--the first dark--at midnight." Bles could not wring another
word from her; nor did the ancient witch, by word or look, again give
the slightest indication that she was aware of his presence.

With reluctant farewell, Bles turned home. For a space Zora watched him,
and once she started after him, but came slowly back, and sat by the
fire-place.

Out of the night came voices and laughter, and the sound of wheels and
galloping horses. It was not the soft, rollicking laughter of black men,
but the keener, more metallic sound of white men's cries, and Bles Alwyn
paused at the edge of the wood, looked back and hesitated, but decided
after a moment to go home and to bed.

Zora, however, leapt to her feet and fled into the night, while the hag
screamed after her and cursed. There was tramping of feet on the cabin
floor, and loud voices and singing and cursing.

"Where's Zora?" some one yelled, with an oath. "Damn it! where is she? I
haven't seen her for a year, you old devil."

The hag whimpered and snarled. Far down in the field of the Fleece, Zora
lay curled beneath a tall dark tree asleep. All night there was coming
and going in the cabin; the talk and laughter grew loud and boisterous,
and the red fire glared in the night.

* * * * *

The days flew by and the moon darkened. In the swamp, the hidden island
lay spaded and bedded, and Bles was throwing up a dyke around the edge;
Zora helped him until he came to the black oak at the western edge. It
was a large twisted thing with one low flying limb that curled out
across another tree and made a mighty seat above the waters.

"Don't throw the dirt too high there," she begged; "it'll bring my seat
too near the earth."

He looked up.

"Why, it's a throne," he laughed.

"It needs a roof," he whimsically told her when his day's work was done.
Deftly twisting and intertwining the branches of tree and bush, he wove
a canopy of living green that shadowed the curious nest and warded it
snugly from wind and water.

Early n