"'I said it was all over--but God! some of it had only just begun! I felt I had fought the legions of Satan, and put my foot on the back of the thing I had annihilated. _Then I saw that blasphemous braid of coarse black hair began to twist and squirm of itself._ "'I might have known it. It was all in the old tales. That damnable hair had a life of its own, that couldn't be ended by killing the creature herself. I knew I'd have to burn it, so I started to hack it off with the machete. God, but it was devilish work! Tough--like iron wires--but I managed to do it. And it was loathsome the way the big braid writhed and struggled in my grasp. "'About the time I had the last strand cut or pulled off I heard the eldritch wailing from behind the house. It's still going, off and on. I don't know what it is, but it must be something springing from this hellish business. It half seems like something I ought to know but can't quite place. It got my nerves the first time I heard it, and I dropped the severed braid in my fright. Then I got a worse fright, for in another second the braid had turned on me and began to strike venomously with one of its ends which had knotted itself up like a sort of grotesque head. I struck out with the machete, and it turned away. Then, when I had my breath again, I saw that the monstrous thing was crawling along the floor by itself like a great black snake. I couldn't do anything for a while, but when it vanished through the door I managed to pull myself together and stumble after it. I could follow the broad, bloody trail, and I saw it led upstairs. It brought me here--and may heaven curse me if I didn't see it through the doorway, striking at poor dazed Marsh like a maddened rattler as it had struck at me, finally coiling around him as a python would. He had begun to come to, but that abominable serpent thing got him before he was on his feet. I knew that all of that woman's hatred was behind it, but I hadn't the power to pull it off. I tried, but it was too much for me. Even the machete was no good--I couldn't swing it freely or it would have slashed Frank to pieces. So I saw those monstrous coils tighten--saw poor Frank crushed to death before my eyes--and all the time that awful faint howling came from somewhere beyond the fields. [Illustration: "I saw those monstrous coils tighten--saw poor Frank crushed to death before my eyes."] "'That's all. I pulled the velvet cloth over the picture, and I hope it'll never be lifted. The thing must be burnt. I couldn't pry the coils off poor, dead Frank--they clung to him like a leech, and seemed to have lost their motion altogether. It's as if that snaky rope of hair had a kind of perverse fondness for the man it killed--it's clinging to him--embracing him. You'll have to burn poor Frank with it--but for God's sake don't forget to see it in ashes! That and the picture. They must both go. The safety of the world demands that they go!' * * * * *