not the more disposed to peace, either, by another
token of the storm. All through the night, since their waking, in
moments of stillness sufficient for it to be heard, they had caught that
cry of the late afternoon. Doggedly it asserted itself against the
uproar. It insisted upon being heard. It too wished to shriek
relievingly, like the inanimate night, and publish its sickness abroad.
They heard it far off, at first. But it moved, and came nearer. Once the
two women quaked when it came to them, shrill and clear, from a point
close at hand. But they bore its invasion along with the wind and the
rain, and lay shameless and numb in the rude arms of the night.

They lay so till deliverance from the hideous spell came at last, in a
vigorous pounding at the front door.

"It's John!" Mrs. Pollard cried in her joy. "And through such a storm!"

She slipped from the bed, threw a damp blanket about her, and groped her
way out of the room and down the stair, her guest stumbling after. They
scarcely could fly fast enough down the dark steps. At the bottom Mrs.
Pollard turned brighter the dimly burning entry lamp, shot back the
bolt with fingers barely able to grasp it in their eagerness, and threw
open the door.

"John!" she cried.

But there moved into the house the tall and thin but heavily framed
figure of an old woman, who peered about in confusion.

In a flash of recognition Mrs. Pollard hurled herself against the
intruder to thrust her out.

"No!" the woman said. "No, you will not, on such a night!" And the
apparition herself, looking with feverish curiosity at her unwilling
hostesses, slowly closed the door and leaned against it.

Mrs. Pollard and her friend turned to fly, in a mad instinct to be
anywhere behind a locked door. Yet before the instinct could reach their
muscles, the unbidden visitor stopped them again.

"No!" she said. "I am dying. Help me!"

The two women turned, as if hypnotically obedient to her command. Their
tongues lay thick and dead in their mouths. They fell into each other's
arms, and their caller stood looking them over, with the same fevered
curiosity. Then she turned her deliberate scrutiny to the house itself.

In a moment she almost reassured them with a first token of being human
and feminine. On the table by the stairs lay a book, and she went and
picked it up. "Fine!" she mused. Then her eye travelled over the
pictures on the walls. "Fine!" she said. "So this is the inside of a