Three times the man passed his hands, wavelike, 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‚ÅÝ‚Äîthe wide, dark Way? She had never thought of it before, and as she thought she crept forward and looked into the fearful face pityingly.
‚ÄúMammy!‚Äù she whispered‚ÅÝ‚Äîwith bated breath‚ÅÝ‚Äî‚ÄúMammy Elspeth!‚Äù Out of the night came a whispered answer: ‚Äú Elspeth! Elspeth! ‚Äù
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.