m before the girl. "They called
you a witch, did they?" she mumbled as she went to and fro. "And the men
were talking and planning together?"

Audrey ate the bread and drank the wine; then, because she was so tired,
leaned her head against the table and fell half asleep. When she roused
herself, it was to find her withered hostess standing over her with a sly
and toothless smile. "I've been thinking," she whispered, "that since
you're here to mind the house, I'll just step out to a neighbor's about
some business I have in hand. You can stay by the fire, honey, and be warm
and comfortable. Maybe I'll not come back to-night."

Going to the window, she dropped a heavy bar across the shutter. "Ye'll
put the chain across the door when I'm out," she commanded. "There be
evil-disposed folk may want to win in." Coming back to the girl, she laid
a skinny hand upon her arm. Whether with palsy or with fright the hand
shook like a leaf, but Audrey, half asleep again, noticed little beyond
the fact that the fire warmed her, and that here at last was rest. "If
there should come a knocking and a calling, honey," whispered the witch,
"don't ye answer to it or unbar the door. Ye'll save time for me that way.
But if they win in, tell them I went to the northward."

Audrey looked at her with glazed, uncomprehending eyes, while the
gnome-like figure appeared to grow smaller, to melt out of the doorway. It
was a minute or more before the wayfarer thus left alone in the hut could
remember that she had been told to bar the door. Then her instinct of
obedience sent her to the threshold. Dusk was falling, and the waters of
the pool lay pale and still beyond the ebony cedars. Through the twilit
landscape moved the crone who had housed her for the night; but she went
not to the north, but southwards toward the river. Presently the dusk
swallowed her up, and Audrey was left with the ragged garden and the
broken fence and the tiny firelit hut. Reentering the room, she fastened
the door, as she had been told to do, and then went back to the hearth.
The fire blazed and the shadows danced; it was far better than last night,
out in the cold, lying upon dead leaves, watching the falling stars. Here
it was warm, warm as June in a walled garden; the fire was red like the
roses ... the roses that had thorns to bring heart's blood.

Audrey fell fast asleep; and while she was asleep and the night was yet
young, the miller whose mill stream had run dry, the