She was essentially a village woman with a profound love of its intimacies and gossip, its fence-corner neighbourliness. The horror with which the village regarded her, as the wife of Mart Brenner, was an eating sore. It was greater than the tragedy of her poor, witless son, the hatred of old Mrs. Brenner, and her ever-present fear of Mart. She had never quite given up her unreasoning hope that some day some one might come to the house in one of Mart's long, unexplained absences and sit down and talk with her over a cup of tea. She put away the feeble hope again as she turned back into the dim room and closed the door behind her. "Must have been that bit of wind," she meditated. "It plays queer tricks sometimes" She went to the mantel and lighted the dull lamp. By the flicker she read the face of the clock. "Tobey's late!" she exclaimed uneasily. Her mind never rested from its fear for Tobey. His childlike mentality made him always the same burden as when she had rocked him hour after hour, a scrawny mite of a baby on her breast. "It's a fearful night for him to be out!" she muttered. "Blood! Blood!" said a tragic voice from a dark corner by the stove. Barely visible in the ruddy half-dark of the room a pair of demoniac eyes met hers. Mrs. Brenner threw her shrivelled and wizened mother-in-law an angry and contemptuous glance. "Be still!" she commanded. "'Pears to me that's all you ever say--blood!" The glittering eyes fell away from hers in a sullen obedience. But the tragic voice went on intoning stubbornly, "Blood on his hands! Red! Dripping! I see blood!" Mrs. Brenner shuddered. "Seems like you could shut up a spell!" she complained. The old woman's voice trailed into a broken and fitful whispering. Olga's commands were the only laws she knew, and she obeyed them. Mrs. Brenner went back to the stove. But her eyes kept returning to the clock and thence to the darkening square of window where the fog pressed heavily into the very room. Out of the gray silence came a shattering sound that sent the ladle crashing out of Mrs. Brenner's nerveless hand and brought a moan from the dozing old woman! It was a scream, a long, piercing scream, so intense, so agonized that it went echoing about the room as though a disembodied spirit were shrieking under the rafters! It was a scream of terror, an innocent, a heart-broken scream! "Tobey!" cried Mrs. Brenner, her face rigid. The old woman began to pick at her ragged skirt, mumbling, "Blood! Blood on his hands! I see it." "That was on the hill," said Mrs. Brenner slowly, steadying her voice. She put her calloused hand against her lips and stood listening with agonized intentness. But now the heavy, foggy silence had fallen again. At intervals came the long, faint wail of the fog-horn. There was no other sound. Even the old woman in the shadowy corner had ceased her mouthing.