in slow waves, and a few dry leaves rustled on an old hawthorn tree
which grew beside the hollow where a house had been, and a low sound
came from the river. The whole country side seemed asleep in the
darkness, but the lonely woman felt no lack of companionship; it was
well suited to her own mood that the world slept and said nothing to
her,--it seemed as if she were the only creature alive.

A little this side of the river shore there was an old burial place, a
primitive spot enough, where the graves were only marked by rough
stones, and the short, sheep-cropped grass was spread over departed
generations of the farmers and their wives and children. By day it was
in sight of the pine woods and the moving water, and nothing hid it
from the great sky overhead, but now it was like a prison walled about
by the barriers of night. However eagerly the woman had hurried to
this place, and with what purpose she may have sought the river bank,
when she recognized her surroundings she stopped for a moment, swaying
and irresolute. "No, no!" sighed the child plaintively, and she
shuddered, and started forward; then, as her feet stumbled among the
graves, she turned and fled. It no longer seemed solitary, but as if a
legion of ghosts which had been wandering under cover of the dark had
discovered this intruder, and were chasing her and flocking around her
and oppressing her from every side. And as she caught sight of a light
in a far-away farmhouse window, a light which had been shining after
her all the way down to the river, she tried to hurry toward it. The
unnatural strength of terror urged her on; she retraced her steps like
some pursued animal; she remembered, one after another, the fearful
stories she had known of that ancient neighborhood; the child cried,
but she could not answer it. She fell again and again, and at last all
her strength seemed to fail her, her feet refused to carry her farther
and she crept painfully, a few yards at a time, slowly along the