ace turned purple and then white. He reeled and fell headlong, like
a tree severed from its roots, and lay still on the hard, stone
pavement. It seemed as if snow were falling on his face--it grew so
white. The Silent Woman stood as still as he, pointing at him with her
finger, her look unchanged. People came running toward us. I lifted the
head of Mr. Grimshaw and laid it on my knee. It felt like the head of
the stranger in Rattleroad. Old Kate bent over and looked at the eyelids
of the man, which fluttered faintly and were still.

"Dead!" she muttered.

Then, as if her work were finished, she turned and made her way through
the crowd and walked slowly down the street. Men stood aside to let her
pass, as if they felt the power of her spirit and feared the touch of
her garments.

Two or three men had run to the house of the nearest doctor. The crowd
thickened. As I sat looking down at the dead face in my lap, a lawyer
who had come out of the court room pressed near me and bent over and
looked at the set eyes of Benjamin Grimshaw and said:

"She floored him at last. I knew she would. He tried not to see her, but
I tell ye that bony old finger of hers burnt a hole in him. He couldn't
stand it. I knew he'd blow up some day under the strain. She got him at
last."

"Who got him?" another asked.

"Rovin' Kate. She killed him pointing her finger at him--so."

"She's got an evil eye. Everybody's afraid o' the crazy ol' Trollope!"

"Nonsense! She isn't half as crazy as the most of us," said the lawyer.
"In my opinion she had a good reason for pointing her finger at that
man. She came from the same town he did over in Vermont. Ye don't know
what happened there."

The doctor arrived. The crowds made way for him. He knelt beside the
still figure and made the tests. He rose and shook his head, saying:

"It's all over. Let one o' these boys go down and bring the undertaker."

Benjamin Grimshaw, the richest man in the township, was dead, and I have
yet to hear of any mourners.

Three days later I saw his body lowered into its grave. The little,
broken-spirited wife stood there with the same sad smile on her face
that I had noted when I first saw her in the hills. Rovin' Kate was
there in the clothes she had worn Christmas day. She was greatly
changed. Her hair was neatly combed. The wild look had left her eyes.
She was like one whose back is relieved of a heavy burden. Her lips
moved as she scattered little red squares o