d lost
all concern about it. There were particles in the sand that
sparkled. It afforded her a childish pleasure to see the twinkles
on every side in the rise and fall of the flames. It was no exertion
to cast on another branch of heather, or even a bough of pine. It
was real pleasure to listen to the crackle and to see the sparks
shoot like rockets from the burning wood. The cave was a fairy
palace. The warmth was grateful. The potatoes were hissing in the
embers. Then Mehetabel dreamily noticed a black shadow stealing
along the lower surface of the roof stone. At first she saw it
without interest, without inquiry in her mind, but little by little
her interest came, and her attention centred itself on the dark
object.

It was a spider, a hairy insect with a monstrous egglike belly,
and it was creeping slowly and with caution towards the hibernating
butterfly. Perhaps its limbs were stiff with inaction, its blood
congealed; perhaps it dreaded lest by precipitation it might alarm
its prey and lose it.

Mehetabel put out her hand, picked up a piece of furze, and cast
it at the spider, which fell.

Then she was uneasy lest it would crawl along the ground and come
to her baby, and sting it. She inherited the common superstition
that spiders are poisonous insects.

She must look for it.

Only now, as she tried to raise herself, did she discover how stiff
her joints had become. She rose to her knees, and raked out some of
the potatoes from the ashes, and swept the floor where the spider
had dropped with a brush of Scottish pine twigs.

Then, all at once, she remained motionless. She heard steps and
voices outside, the latter in low converse. Next a face looked in,
and an exclamation followed, "Jamaica! There, sure enough, she be!"

The voice, the face--there was no mistaking either. They belonged
to Sally Rocliffe.

The power to cry out failed in Mehetabel. She hastily thrust her
child behind her, into the depths of the cave, and interposed
herself between it and the glittering eyes of the woman.

"Come on, Jamaica, we'll see how she has made herself comfortable,"
said Mrs. Rocliffe, and she entered, followed by Giles Cheel. Both
had to stoop at the opening, but when they were a few feet within,
could stand upright.

"Well, now, I call this coorious," said Sarah; "don't you, Jamaica?
Here's all the Punch-Bowl turned out. Some runnin' one way, some
another, all about Matabel. Some sez she's off her head; some
t