e end," went on Mother Moll.

Tessibel caught her breath. It was the black place--the rope of the
Canadian Indian. The awfulness--the loneliness of her despair made her
whimper brokenly behind a tattered sleeve. The hag was muttering her
incantations and did not heed the girl.

"The rope air a long 'un and a stout 'un," Ma Moll's voice had raised to
a shrill cry as she described the instrument of death. Tessibel's head
was now close to the hag's. Her wild terror-stricken eyes following the
stick as it stirred the contents of the pot.

"Air the loop around a neck, and air there humps under the head what's a
hangin'?"

She quivered as she spoke. The thin body of the hag crept nearer to the
child--the gray straggling locks mingling with the copper curls, and the
youthful shoulders of the fishermaid contrasting strongly with those of
the bent old woman.

The hag was searching for the humps--her wild old eyes glaring into the
seething mess. A trembling bat loosened its hold upon the rafters above
and blinded by the light of the candle, thrashed its zig-zag course
about the shanty, banging first the window, then the door, and causing
both watchers to lift their heads. They saw him as he fell fluttering to
the floor, lifting his body pantingly up and down.

Again they gazed into the pot, and as one thin hand held the whirling
stick the hag's bony finger pointed mysteriously to the shadow marking
the future.

"Be there humps," persisted Tess, "big round humps standin' out as how
the hills stand by the lake?"

The hag replied in a hoarse whisper:

"There be no humps, but there air a dead man."

So thoroughly did Tess believe in the witch's words that she sank back
with a cry, upon her wet red feet.

"It ain't daddy," she breathed slowly, hardly daring to utter the name.

"There be no humps," repeated Ma Moll. "There air a storm and a dead
man, but his face ain't a showin'. There air another dead one on the
shore. He ain't the same kind of one, he air--"

"A gamekeeper," filled in Tess.

The witch wobbled her head in assent, as Tessibel leaned over to follow
the long finger defining the shadow.

"There air a shanty," Mother Moll went on, "a child alone, and dead
things layin' about and there air a--a--"

The two heads were now bent directly over the pot. Tess caught her
breath in a sob. Was Daddy Skinner coming back to the shanty? The dragon
blood sputtered, boiling higher and higher, over the heat of the fire