dress?"

"A red ribbon round her neck."

"Anything else?"

"No--except sandal-shoes."

"A red ribbon and sandal-shoes," she said to herself.

Mrs. Nunsuch went and searched till she found a fragment of the
narrowest red ribbon, which she took downstairs and tied round the
neck of the image. Then fetching ink and a quill from the rickety
bureau by the window, she blackened the feet of the image to the
extent presumably covered by shoes; and on the instep of each foot
marked cross-lines in the shape taken by the sandal-strings of those
days. Finally she tied a bit of black thread round the upper part of
the head, in faint resemblance to a snood worn for confining the hair.

Susan held the object at arm's length and contemplated it with a
satisfaction in which there was no smile. To anybody acquainted with
the inhabitants of Egdon Heath the image would have suggested Eustacia
Yeobright.

From her work-basket in the window-seat the woman took a paper of
pins, of the old long and yellow sort whose heads were disposed
to come off at their first usage. These she began to thrust into
the image in all directions, with apparently excruciating energy.
Probably as many as fifty were thus inserted, some into the head of
the wax model, some into the shoulders, some into the trunk, some
upwards through the soles of the feet, till the figure was completely
permeated with pins.

She turned to the fire. It had been of turf; and though the high heap
of ashes which turf fires produce was somewhat dark and dead on the
outside, upon raking it abroad with the shovel the inside of the mass
showed a glow of red heat. She took a few pieces of fresh turf from
the chimney-corner and built them together over the glow, upon which
the fire brightened. Seizing with the tongs the image that she had
made of Eustacia, she held it in the heat, and watched it as it began
to waste slowly away. And while she stood thus engaged there came
from between her lips a murmur of words.

It was a strange jargon--the Lord's Prayer repeated backwards--the
incantation usual in proceedings for obtaining unhallowed assistance
against an enemy. Susan uttered the lugubrious discourse three
times slowly, and when it was completed the image had considerably
diminished. As the wax dropped into the fire a long flame arose from
the spot, and curling its tongue round the figure ate still further
into its substance. A pin occasionally dropped with the wax, and the
em