she could
hear whisperings of muffled voices and feel beckoning hands guiding her
to a world peopled by specters and evil beings that prey upon the dead.

"Let me pass!" she said with amazing vigor, as Squire Boatfield, with
kindly concern, tried to bar her exit through the door, "let me pass I
say! the dead and I have questions to ask of one another."

"This is madness!" broke in Marmaduke de Chavasse with an effort; "that
body is not a fit sight for a woman to look upon."

He would have seized the Quakeress by the arm in order to force her
back, but Richard Lambert already stood between her and him.

"Let no one dare to lay a hand on her," he said quietly.

And the old woman escaping from all those who would have restrained her,
walked rapidly through the doorway and down the flagged path rendered
slippery with the sleet. The gale caught the white wings of her coif,
causing them to flutter about her ears, and freezing strands of her gray
locks which stood out now all round her head like a grizzled halo.

She could scarcely advance, for the wind drove her kirtle about her lean
thighs, and her feet with the heavy tan shoes sank ankle deep in the
puddles formed by the water in the interstices of the flagstones. The
rain beat against her face, mingling with the tears which now flowed
freely down her cheeks. But she did not heed the discomfort nor yet the
cold, and she would not be restrained.

The next moment she stood beside the rough wooden coffin and with a
steady hand had lifted the wet sheet, which continued to flap with dull,
mournful sound round the feet of the dead.

The Quakeress looked down upon the figure stretched out here in
death--neither majestic nor peaceful, but horrible and weirdly
mysterious. She did not flinch at the sight. Resentment against the
foreigner dimmed her sense of horror.

"So my fine prince," she said, whilst awed at the spectacle of this old
woman parleying with the dead, carriers and mourners had instinctively
moved a few steps away from her, "so thou wouldst harm my boy! ... Thou
always didst hate him ... thou with thy grand airs, and thy rough
ways.... Had the Lord allowed it, this hand of thine would ere now have
been raised against him ... as it oft was raised against the old woman
... whose infirmities should have rendered her sacred in thy sight."

She stooped, and deliberately raised the murdered man's hand in hers,
and for one moment fixed her gaze upon it. For that one