Tess of the Storm Country

Tess stepped shivering to the door and knocked. Receiving no answer, she sent another pealing sound through the howling wind, for she knew Mother Moll was there.

Suddenly a voice came from within.

"What in the devil's name do ye want here, at this time of the darkness?"

"It air Tess, Ma Moll. I wants yer fortune pot."

"Go home and come agin to-morry."

"Won't," Tess sent back defiantly, "air goin' to see ye to-night. I air goin' to give ye somethin' for yer luck pot."

A scramble, a hurrying sound from within, and the door was dragged open. Tess stepped into the dark room,--the whizzing of insects overhead coming dimly to her through the rocking of the shanty. One broad-winged clammy night bat whirled close to 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.