haped, with a table and a cross, all as if hewn with
an axe out of live wood, and painted black. On the table were the
little black coffins, each small as baby's toys, which we had seen the
mad women carry through the garden. Each of these had now a candle
burning upon it. But the central light, a little larger than the rest,
was protected about the flame by a curious contrivance made of red
paper glued upon bits of stick which gave it (from where we stood) the
appearance of a crimson lantern.

For the first time, I think Elsie was now a little frightened. And no
wonder, for suddenly we saw something appear in the dark of the big
empty barn, amid a curious pervading smell that I took to be incense,
but which might have been cockroaches. I liked bravely for Elsie to
feel like that. For she had been just all too secure and cock-a-hoop
up till now.

What we saw was a row of kneeling figures singing a strange wordless
chant, something between the wind in a score of keyholes and distant
dog kennels on a moon-light night. At any rate, it tried the little
girl's stomach. Because, quite suddenly she pitched forward on my
shoulder and cried: "O Joe, get me out of this!"

Then the next moment, just like thrusting a stick into a wasp's byke,
each of the black kneeling figures had snatched her candle and made
after us.

I don't know what might have happened. To me it was like a nightmare
till we found ourselves in the open courtyard again. This had seemed
creepy enough to me before. But now it was just like our own back
green, as homelike and as pleasant, with the open air and the waving
woods and all.

Within the barn we heard elricht squeaks and cries, like those of bats.
But outside the door, holding the heavy curtain back, so that we could
get out easily, stood a tall, masculine woman with gray, smoothly
brushed hair, dressed in a black blouse and skirt that had something
under them which looked like the haircloth covering of the chairs in
our second best parlour at home--the kind my father sits in and smokes
over his books and cash-box. She was the woman with the short skirt we
had seen watering the lilies when we looked across the black and oily
moat.

"This is Miss Orrin, my housekeeper," said Elsie's grandfather
automatically.

"Aphra Orrin!" said the lady, with a prim intonation, tossing her head
like one hurt in her pride, "one who hath been raised up to be a mother
to the orphan and the shelterless,