n it came. She heard the heavy footsteps
crashing through the underbrush--coming, coming, as from the end of the
world. She shrank still farther back, and a shadow swept the door.

He was a mighty man, black and white-haired, and his eyes were the eyes
of death. He bent to enter the door, and then uplifting himself and
stretching his great arms, his palms touched the blackened rafters.

Zora started forward. Thick memories of some forgotten past came piling
in upon her. Where had she known him? What was he to her?

Slowly Elspeth, with quivering hands, unwound the black and snake-like
object that always guarded her breast. Without a word, he took it, and
again his hands flew heavenward. With a low and fearful moan the old
woman lurched sideways, then crashed, like a fallen pine, upon the
hearthstone. She lay still--dead.

Three times the man passed his hands, wave-like, above the dead. Three
times he murmured, and his eyes burned into the shadows, where the girl
trembled. Then he turned and went as he had come, his heavy feet
crashing through the underbrush, on and on, fainter and fainter, as to
the end of the world.

Zora shook herself from the trance-like horror and passed her hands
across her eyes to drive out the nightmare. But, no! there lay the dead
upon the hearth with the firelight flashing over her, a bloated,
hideous, twisted thing, distorted in the rigor of death. A moment Zora
looked down upon her mother. She felt the cold body whence the
wandering, wrecked soul had passed. She sat down and stared death in the
face for the first time. A mighty questioning arose within, a
questioning and a yearning.

Was Elspeth now at peace? Was Death the Way--the wide, dark Way? She had
never thought of it before, and as she thought she crept forward and
looked into the fearful face pityingly.

"Mammy!" she whispered--with bated breath--"Mammy Elspeth!" Out of the
night came a whispered answer: "_Elspeth! Elspeth!_"

Zora sprang to her feet, alert, fearful. With a swing of her arm, she
pulled the great oaken door to and dropped the bar into its place. Over
the dead she spread a clean white sheet. Into the fire she thrust
pine-knots. They glared in vague red, and shadowy brilliance, waving and
quivering and throwing up thin swirling columns of black smoke. Then
standing beside the fireplace with the white, still corpse between her
and the door, she took up her awful vigil.

There came a low knocking at the door; th