n so quickly at
the first sound of their horses' feet.

"And in truth if you had not come across the moor, but along the
beaten track from the Chateau of Machecoul, you would never have
caught so much as a glimpse of any child or mother in all Saint
Philbert."

At this point he beckoned Sholto, Malise, and the Lord James to come
nearer to him, and standing with his back to the fire and their three
heads very close, he related the terrible tale of the Dread that for
eight years had stalked grim and gaunt through the westlands of
France, La Vendee, and Bas Bretagne. In all La Vendee there was not a
village that had not lost a child. In many a hamlet about the shores
of the sunny Loire was there scarce a house from which one had not
vanished. They were seen playing in the greenwood, the eye was lifted,
and lo! they were not. A boy went to the well. An hour after his
pitcher stood beside it filled to the brim. But he himself was never
more seen by holt or heath. A little maid, sweet and innocent, looked
over the churchyard wall; she spied something that pleased her. She
climbed over to get it--and was not.

"Oh, I could tell you of a thousand such if I had time," shrilled the
thin treble of the cripple in their eager ears, "if I dared--if I only
dared!"

"Dared," said Malise; "why man--what is the matter with you? None
could hear you but we three men."

"My wife--my wife," he quavered; "I bid you be silent, or at least
speak not so loud. La Meffraye she is called--she can hear all things.
See--"

He made a sudden movement and bared his right arm. It was withered to
the shoulder and of a dark purple colour approaching black.

"La Meffraye did that," he gasped; "she blasted it because I would not
do the evil she wished."

"Then why do you not kill her?" said Malise, whose methods were not
subtle. "If she were mine, I would throttle her, and give her body to
the hounds."

"Hush, I bid you be silent for dear God's sake in whom I believe,"
again came the voice of the cripple. "You do not know what you say. La
Meffraye cannot die. Perhaps she will vanish away in a blast of the
fire of hell--one day when God is very strong and angry. But she
cannot die. She only leads others to death. She dies not herself."

"You are kind, gentlemen," he went on after a pause, finding them
continue silent; "I will show you all. Pray the saint for me at his
shrine that I may die and go to purgatory. Or (if it were to a
different one)