o her, but was gone before she could put
up her hand.

"It air a bad night that brought the brat out to me, so it air," growled
the hag, "be it the headless man from Hayte's place what air been
hauntin' ye, or the Indian squaw with her burnt brat?"

She was feeling about for a match as she croaked out her words. Tess did
not answer, but waited until Mother Moll lighted a candle and then
dropped her load upon the floor.

"They air for the luck-pot, I says, Ma Moll," said she, opening the bag,
and displaying the eels, "I comes to know what air in it for me."

"Air they dead eels what you found on the shore," asked the hag
suspiciously, "Maybe them ain't fresh ones."

"I killed them myself but a time ago," responded Tess. "It hurts them to
lug them livin' out of the water, but they fills your pot for many a
mess."

It was a tempting wage for the hag. She blew the dying grate embers into
a blaze over which she hung a small iron pot. The bats had ceased the
infernal flapping of their grotesque wings, and were clinging trembling
to the rafters above. Tess could mark them through the shadows, as one
by one she slowly counted them.

Ma Moll was crooning over the kettle. She was a woman older than any
one even dared guess. With a cackling laugh she always answered
questions as to her age with the assertion that she was "nigh on to two
hundred and a deal more than that," and no one could contradict her, for
she was old when Orn Skinner was a small boy.

Tess, taking her eyes from the hanging bats, allowed them to rest upon
the hag. The small dwarfed figure was not so tall as her own and the
rounded shoulders, drawn down by great age, held a head grizzled and
shriveled. A few tufts of gray hair hung over the ragged wrapper-like
garment which covered the thin body. Great bunches stood out on the bare
feet, while the long fingers stirring the liquid in the pot, were
knuckled high on each hand.

"Air it the headless man what I spoke of," Moll asked again peering into
the pot, "no--it ain't that ... it air somethin' worse than that."

"Worse than that," echoed Tess coming forward, and sinking down upon her
knees beside the hag.

"It air worse than the squaw and her burnt brat ... Aye, worse--"

"Worse--than--what?" faltered Tess, with a sob in her throat.

"It air the shadder of a rope--"

Here the hag moved closer to the bubbling kettle while the red-brown
head pushed nearer and nearer.

"And there air a loop in th