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.
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