So odd was the old creature’s behaviour, so utterly unexplained by anything in sight--for not even a cat or a chicken was in the cabin--that Grania, for all her haste, stood still a moment, staring at her as she hopped from side to side of the narrow space. She had seen Biddy behave queerly before, but never quite so queerly as this. Suddenly her reputed powers of seeing and holding communication with the _sidh_ came into her mind, and a chill sensation shot over her. Was there _really_ something in the cabin that she could not see? And if so, whereabouts was it, and what was it like? Biddy, meanwhile, in one of her turnings, had caught sight of her visitor standing ghost-like by the door, and uttered a sudden scream, the odd, discordant, hardly-human scream of the deaf and dumb. Grania thereupon stepped forward to explain her errand, the old woman, after a moment’s stare of unrecognition, beginning to nod and duck as she perceived who her visitor was. The girl looked hastily round for something of Teige’s, so as to explain whom she was in search of. She could see nothing but a battered high hat hanging to a hook in the wall which had formerly belonged to dumb Denny, but which his nephew sometimes wore when he went to Aranmore to chapel. This hat she took down, and held towards the old woman with an interrogative gesture, pointing at the same time towards the door. Whether she was understood or not it was not easy to tell. In any case, Biddy’s information was not of any very detailed or available character. Dropping down upon the stool which stood beside the hearth, and throwing her withered arms over her head, she uttered a wild cry, something between a croak and a scream, which was intended to mean ‘Gone! Gone!’ an ejaculation she had often made use of since her brother died, and which apparently conveyed to her mind all that sense of departure, of loneliness, and of desertion which we articulate people employ so many, and often such inadequate, words to convey. Evidently it was useless to hope for further information, so Grania turned to go. Upon opening the door a solid, white wall of fog rose in front of her, one in which every detail was lost, and which it needed some little resolution to penetrate, so opaque and impervious looking was it. Turning for an instant before the fog again swallowed her up, she saw that old Biddy had already forgotten her visit. With eyes fixed upon a spot a little way above her head, she had risen from her stool and was stealthily approaching that spot, evidently with the intention of pouncing upon whoever was seated there before he or she could hope to perceive her approach and make off. Against the dim background of the cabin the single red fantastic figure lit by the firelight made a curiously vivid dot of colour, which seemed to hang for several minutes before Grania’s eyes as she pursued her way across the fog-filled fissures. CHAPTER VI