her body bent forward over her knees, her
disfigured face supported on one hand, while the other lay across her
breast. This was her common position, and she seldom moved to change
it. She hummed tunes to herself sometimes,--not hymn tunes,--but never
was heard to utter an articulate word. Often you might have thought
her asleep,--but no! when you least expected it a shining black eye
was fixed oh you; an eye which, two hundred years ago, would have
convicted its owner of witchcraft. It was the only bright thing about
the poor woman.

Whenever the master of the house came to the kitchen, Nurse's
witch-eye followed him animal-like; no movement of his, no expression,
seemed to escape it. A curious observer might sometimes have remarked
in her, during the few moments after the man's entrance, a muffled
agitation, an irregularity of the breath, an obscure anxiety and
suspense. This, however, would soon subside, and rarely recur during
his stay. The phenomenon had been observable daily for nearly a score
of years, yet nothing had meantime happened to explain or justify it.
Had an original dread--groundless or not--prolonged its phantom
existence precisely because it had never met with justification?

Often for weeks at a time, complete silence would obtain between
master and Nurse. He would enter and ramble hither and thither the
ample kitchen; eat what had been prepared for him, and be off again
without a word or glance of acknowledgment. Or, again, pacing
irregularly to and fro before the fireplace, he would pour forth long
disjointed rhapsodies, wild speculations, hopes, and misgivings; his
mood changing from solemn to gay, and round through gusty passion to
morbid gloom. But never did he address his words to Nurse so much as
to himself or to some imaginary interlocutor; and she for her part
never answered him a syllable, but sat in silence through it all. Yet
was she ever alert to listen, and sometimes the subdued trembling
would come on and the obstruction of breath. But when the talker, in
mid-excitement of speech, snatched his violin and drew from it
melodies weirdly exquisite, soothing his diseased thoughts and
harmonizing them, Nurse would become once more composed; the phantom
danger was again put off, and the violinist would presently fall into
silence,--sometimes into sleep. But still, while he slept, the
witch-eye watched him; though with an expression of yearning, uncouth
intensity which seldom ventured fort