oman--give--give." The breathing, like command rather than prayer, set
the words grating on the air again and again. "This woman--this
woman--give! give! give!"

The cause of the lad's terror was a strange conviction that the writhing
creature on the earth was certainly conversing with something not of
earth, whether God, or angel, or devil he did not ask. He was
encompassed by the dreadful belief that the other saw and heard what he
could not.

The prostrate man clenched his fists and struck the black ground on
which he lay. There was an intense silence, and then again the grating
breath of a hoarse throat that lay among the grass blades babbled forth
a multitude of confessions and fiercely-worded supplications which the
little lad could neither understand nor remember.

There was a sudden change of attitude and voice. The lad saw that the
man on the grass sat up, and as if he had received an answer, spoke in
reply, not now in wailing supplication, but in quick whispered argument.
The lad cowered with a fresh thrill of ghostly terror which burned the
mad words into his memory.

"The loss would be to thee of the fairest of thine handmaids, and to her
of her own soul, and to me--" but here the words of irritable contention
failed in deep choking sobs. Then, to the lad's perfect dismay, the
black figure bounded to its feet and the arms were flung about in the
darkness as if wrestling with an unseen enemy. Now, being desperate, the
lad darted forth from his nook; passing in tip-toe rush at the back of
this struggling figure, he sped home in his gust of fear, and, with the
fantastic secrecy of youth, did not tell what he had heard and seen till
years had come and gone.

CHAPTER XVII.

The May morning was wreathing itself with opening flowers to meet the
first hour of sunlight when Susannah was startled by hearing that the
prophet inquired for her. There was in the house where she lived an
empty chamber, unfurnished because of poverty; it was in this that the
prophet, who demanded a private audience, awaited her.

So vexed was she at the public advertisement which he had made of her,
that she forgot the bereavement she had suffered since she last saw him;
but when she looked up she saw that Smith's face wore signs of emotion
that he was not trying to conceal.

At first he made an attempt at some unctuous form of address, an effort
at formality, a mechanical tribute to habit. Failing to finish his
phrase, he