At first I thought myself deceived by my senses, which would have been
natural enough after the exciting scenes of the last few days; I raised
myself upon my elbow, gazing with my eyes starting with fear and horror.

It was she indeed! I lay horrified, for there she sat calm and immovable,
with her hands clasped over her skinny knees, just as I had seen her in
the snow, with her long scraggy neck outstretched, her hooked nose, her
compressed lips.

How had the Black Pest got here? How had she found her way into this high
tower crowning the dangerous precipices? Everything that Sperver had told
me of this mysterious being seemed to be coming true! And now the
unaccountable behaviour of Lieverlé, growling so fiercely against the
wall, seemed clear as the daylight. I huddled myself close up into the
alcove, hardly daring to breathe, and staring upon this motionless
profile just as a mouse out of its hole fixes its paralysed stare upon
the cat that is watching for it.

The old woman stirred no more than the rock-hewn pillars on each side of
the hearthstone, and her lips were mumbling inarticulate sounds.

My heart was palpitating, my fears increased momentarily during the long
silence, made more startling by the motionless supernatural figure that
sat there before me.

This had lasted a quarter of an hour when, the fire catching a splinter
of fir-wood, a flash of light broke out, the shaving twisted and flamed,
and a few rays of light flared to the end of the room.

That luminous jet was sufficient to show me that the creature was clothed