The _worm-eaten traveler_! What an appalling, yet fascinating communication! Helen waited in breathless impatience, watching the movements of the Sibyl, with darkened pupils and heaving bosom. At length when a sudden gust of wind blew a naked bough, with a sound like the rattling of dry bones against the windows, and a falling brand scattered a shower of red sparks over the hearth-stone, Miss Thusa, waving the bony fingers of her right hand, thus began-- "Once there was a woman spinning by the kitchen fire, spinning away for dear life, all living alone, without even a green-eyed cat to keep her from being lonely. The coals were all burnt to cinders, and the shadows were all rolled up in black bundles in the four corners of the room. The woman went on spinning, singing as she spun-- 'Oh! if I'd good company--if I'd good company, Oh! how happy should I be!' There was a rustling noise in the chimney as if a great chimney-swallow was tumbling down, and the woman stooped and looked up into the black flue." Here Miss Thusa bowed her tall form, and turned her beaked nose up towards the glowing chimney. Helen, palpitating with excitement followed her motions, expecting to see some horrible monster descend all grim with soot. "Down came a pair of broad, dusty, skeleton feet," continued Miss Thusa, recoiling a few paces from the hearth, and lowering her voice till it sounded husky and unnatural, "right down the chimney, right in front of the woman, who cried out, while she turned her wheel round and round with her bobbin, 'What makes your feet so big, my friend?' 'Traveling long journeys. Traveling long journeys,' replied the skeleton feet, and again the woman sang-- 'Oh! if I'd good company--if I'd good company, Oh! how happy should I be!' Rattle--rattle went something in the chimney, and down came a pair of little mouldering ankles. 'What makes your ankles so small?' asked the woman. 'Worm-eaten, worm-eaten,' answered the mouldering ankles, and the wheel went merrily round." It is unnecessary to repeat the couplet which Miss Thusa sang between every descending _horror_, in a voice which sounded as if it came through a fine-toothed comb, in little trembling wires, though it gave indescribable effect to her gloomy tale. "In a few moments," continued Miss Thusa, "she heard a shoving, pushing sound in the chimney like something groaning and laboring against the sides of the bricks, and presently a great, big, bloated body came down and set itself on legs that were no larger than a pipe stem. Then a little, scraggy neck, and, last of all, a monstrous skeleton head that grinned from ear to ear. 'You want good company, and you shall have it,' said the figure, and its voice did sound awfully--but the woman put up her wheel and asked the grim thing to take a chair and make himself at home.