and again, till Ledscha raised her tear-stained face.

Impulse urged her to kiss the sufferer, but as she bent over the mourner
the copper dish slipped from her knees and fell rattling on the floor.

Ledscha started up in terror, and at the same moment the Alexandrian's
packs of hounds on the shore opposite to the Owl's Nest began to bark so
loudly that the deaf old woman heard the baying as if it came from a
great distance; but the girl ran out into the open air and, returning at
the end of a few minutes, called joyously to the sorceress from the
threshold, "They are coming!"

"They, they," faltered Tabus, hurriedly pushing her disordered gray hair
under the veil on the back of her head, while exclaiming, scarcely able
to use her voice in her joyous excitement: "I knew it. He keeps his word.
My Satabus is coming. The ducks, the bread, the fish, girl! Good, loyal
heart."

Then a wide, long shadow fell across the dimly lighted room, and from the
darkened threshold a strangely deep, gasping peal of laughter rang from a
man's broad breast.

"Satabus! My boy!" the witch's shriek rose above the peculiar sound.

"Mother!" answered the gray-bearded lips of the pirate.

For one short moment he remained standing at the door with outstretched
arms. Then he took a step toward the beloved being from whom he had been
separated more than two years, and suddenly throwing himself down before
her, while his huge lower limbs covered part of the floor, he stretched