"You are talking wildly," said Tabitha, by no means moved at her
sister's solicitude for her welfare. "Your mind is wandering; you know
that I have no faith in such things."

Ursula sighed, and beckoning to Eunice, who was weeping silently at the
bedside, placed her feeble arms around her neck and kissed her.

"Do not weep, dear," she said feebly. "Perhaps it is best so. A lonely
woman's life is scarce worth living. We have no hopes, no aspirations;
other women have had happy husbands and children, but we in this
forgotten place have grown old together. I go first, but you must soon
follow."

Tabitha, comfortably conscious of only forty years and an iron frame,
shrugged her shoulders and smiled grimly.

"I go first," repeated Ursula in a new and strange voice as her heavy
eyes slowly closed, "but I will come for each of you in turn, when your
lease of life runs out. At that moment I will be with you to lead your
steps whither I now go."

As she spoke the flickering lamp went out suddenly as though
extinguished by a rapid hand, and the room was left in utter darkness.
A strange suffocating noise issued from the bed, and when the trembling
women had relighted the lamp, all that was left of Ursula Mallow was
ready for the grave.

That night the survivors passed together. The dead woman had been a
firm believer in the existence of that shadowy borderland which is said