nd free hit Aunt Anne's face, twisting
her body. Then, suddenly weak, so that she saw faintness coming towards
her like a cloak, she whispered:

"Oh, Aunt Anne, let me go! Oh, Aunt Anne, let me go! Please, please,
let me go!"

Suddenly the house was darkened, at her feet was a gulf of blackness,
and into it she tumbled, down, far down, with a last little gasping
sigh of distress.

PART III

THE WITCH

CHAPTER I

THE THREE VISITS

On a spring day, early in March of the next year, 1908, Mathew Cardinal
thought that he would go and discover how his niece was prospering. He
had seen nothing of her for a very long time.

He did not blame himself for this, but then he never blamed himself for
anything. A fate, often drunken and always imbecile, was to blame for
everything that he did, and he pitied himself sincerely for having to
be in the hands of such a creature. He happened to be just now very
considerably frightened about himself, more frightened than he had been
for a very long time, so frightened in fact that he had drunk nothing
for weeks. For many years he had been leading a see-saw existence, and
the see-saw had been swung by that mysterious force known as Finance.
He had a real gift for speculation, and had he been granted from birth
a large income he might have ended his days as a Justice of the Peace
and a Member of Parliament. Unfortunately he had never had any private
means, and he had never been able to make enough by his mysterious
speculations to float him into security--"Let me once get so far," he
would say to himself, "and I am a made man." But drink, an easy
tolerance of bad company, and a rather touching conceit had combined to
divorce him from so fine a destiny. He had risen, he had fallen, made a
good thing out of this tip, been badly done over that, and missed
opportunity after opportunity through a fuddled brain and an
overweening self-confidence.

Last year for several months everything had succeeded; it was during
that happy period that he had visited Maggie. Perhaps it was well for
his soul that success had not continued. He was a man whom failure
improved, having a certain childish warmth of heart and simplicity of
outlook when things went badly with him. Success made him abominably
conceited, and being without any morality self-confidence drove him to
disastrous lengths. Now once more he was very near destruction and he
knew it, very near things like forging and highway ro