Yet he grew more and more restless. The devil danced in his veins and burned in his forehead. His hands shook. He heard a rustle of departing feet beneath his window, then a pause and a faint halloo.
“All right,” he called, and in a moment went downstairs and out into the night. As he closed the front door there seemed to come faintly up from the swamp a low ululation, like the prolonged cry of some wild bird, or the wail of one’s mourning for his dead.
Within the cabin, Elspeth heard. Tremblingly, she swayed to her feet, a haggard, awful sight. She motioned Zora away, and stretching her hands palms upward to the sky, cried with dry and fear-struck gasp:
“I’se called! I’se called!”
On the bed the child smiled in its dreaming; the red flame of the firelight set the gold to dancing in her hair.
Zora shrank back into the shadows and listened. Then it came. She heard the heavy footsteps crashing through the underbrush‚ÅÝ‚Äîcoming, 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 snakelike 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‚ÅÝ‚Äîdead.