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 the 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.