once Mary had gone the old woman turned, and made her way back to the grave. Reaching inside a goat-skin pouch that hung from her side she produced something cold and pale, and kneeling, laid it upon the heart of the mound. Then rose and looked about her with a narrowing eye. Clasping a withered hand about the amulet that hung from her neck she set off, leaving the bit of melancholy white behind. 

 A human finger. 

 The amulet about her neck was a raven’s foot, clutching in frozen death a dark opal. 

 Many hours later the old woman had still not returned to the cottage. Mary sat with her elbows upon the sill of the loft window, the rage of thoughts and questions inside her gradually slowing to the one emotion possible in one who had seen and known such endless disappointment: disbelief. 

 But try as she might to resolve herself to it, to accept that it had not happened, still the phantom touch lingered inside her, denying all peace. “My Mary.” How differently the voice had said those words, than on the day of her brother’s passion! And yet how similar, how full of the same love and care. And the only thought that would take solid hold in her mind was that the two feelings, gentle love and hard desire, were one in a man, inseparable, and that even as a child she had inspired both in him. My Mary. Mine. She wanted to fall on her knees then and there, and pray to be taken to him, in death or in life. But the sound of her mother’s voice stayed her, rising angrily from below. 

 “Mary! What are you about? Come down here at once.” 

 Obediently, though without affection she submitted, descending the wooden ladder-stair from the loft that served as her bedroom. Her mother’s face and whole bearing spoke of the cold composure, the loveless discipline which always followed such an outburst. It was an expression she had come to know all too well. Wherein lay the mystery of this woman? She did not know, only that there was no commiseration, no sense of shared loss between them, and that she was hardly what the younger woman imagined a mother should be. 

 But on this day there was especial agitation among her classic, though faded Scot features---round, sturdy face and steady, full blue eyes---and a greater visible effort to control herself. Of late this usually meant that she had quarreled with Margaret. And these arguments, Mary knew, somehow centered on herself. 

 “Where is she?” the 

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