unbarred portals.

Winsome stepped lightly to her own door, which opened without
noise. She looked out and said, in a compromise between a coaxing
whisper and a voice of soft command:

"Meg, I want ye."

Meg Kissock came along the passage with the healthy glow of the
night air on her cheeks, and her candle in her hand. She seemed as
if she would pause at the door, but Winsome motioned her
imperiously within. So Meg came within, and Winsome shut to the
door. Then she simply held out her hand, at which Meg gazed as
silently.

"Meg!" said Winsome, warningly.

A queer, faint smile passed momentarily over the face of Winsome's
handmaid, as though she had been long trying to solve some problem
and had suddenly and unexpectedly found the answer. Slowly she
lifted up her dark-green druggit skirt, and out of a pocket of
enormous size, which was swung about her waist like a captured
leviathan heaving inanimate on a ship's cable, she extracted a
sheet of crumpled paper.

Winsome took it without a word. Her eye said "Good-night" to Meg
as plain as the minister's text.

Meg Kissock waited till she was at the door, and then, just as she
was making her silent exit, she said: