cried Loa one day,--she whom her mother had called the
little bird,--'we are a-cold because of our rags. Our mother would have
woven blue cloth for us and made it into garments.'

"'Your mother is where she will weave no cloth!' said the stepmother,
and she laughed many times.

"All in the cold and still of that night, the stepmother wakened, and
she knew not why. She sat up in her bed, and knew not why. She knew not
why, and she looked into the room, and there, by the light of a burning
fish's tail--'twas such a light the folk used in those days--was a
woman, weaving. She had no loom, and shuttle she had none. All with
her hands she wove a wondrous cloth. Stooping and bending, rising and
swaying with motions beautiful as those the Northern Lights make in a
midwinter sky, she wove a cloth. The warp was blue and mystical to see,
the woof was white, and shone with its whiteness, so that of all the
webs the stepmother had ever seen, she had seen none like to this.

"Yet the sight delighted her not, for beyond the drifting web, and
beyond the weaver she saw the room and furniture--aye, saw them through
the body of the weaver and the drifting of the cloth. Then she knew--as
the haunted are made to know--that 'twas the mother of the children come
to show her she could still weave cloth. The heart of the stepmother was
cold as ice, yet she could not move to waken her husband at her side,
for her hands were as fixed as if they were crossed on her dead breast.
The voice in her was silent, and her tongue stood to the roof of her
mouth.

"After a time the wraith of the dead mother moved toward her--the wraith
of the weaver moved her way--and round and about her body was wound the
shining cloth. Wherever it touched the body of the stepmother, it was as
hateful to her as the touch of a monster out of sea-slime, so that her
flesh crept away from it, and her senses swooned.

"In the early morning she awoke to the voices of the children,
whispering in the inner room as they dressed with half-frozen fingers.
Still about her was the hateful, beautiful web, filling her soul with
loathing and with fear. She thought she saw the task set for her, and
when the children crept in to light the fire--very purple and thin were
their little bodies, and the rags hung from them--she arose and held out
the shining cloth, and cried:

"'Here is the web your mother wove for you. I will make it into
garments!' But even as she spoke the cloth faded