"Martin, don't go! Martin, don't leave me! Don't leave me, Martin!" He seemed to break then in his resolution. "It's better. It's better," he cried, as though he were shouting himself down, and then pushing Aunt Anne with his arm he hurried out almost running, his steps stumbling down the stairs. Maggie ran to the door. Her aunt stopped her, holding her back. "It's better, Maggie dear," she said very gently, repeating Martin's words. The sound of the hall door closing echoed through the house. Maggie struggled, crying again and again: "Let me go! Let me go! I must go with him! I can't live without him! Let me go!" She fought then, and with one hand free hit Aunt Anne's face, twisting her body. Then, suddenly weak, so that she saw faintness coming towards her like a cloak, she whispered: "Oh, Aunt Anne, let me go! Oh, Aunt Anne, let me go! Please, please, let me go!" Suddenly the house was darkened, at her feet was a gulf of blackness, and into it she tumbled, down, far down, with a last little gasping sigh of distress. PART III THE WITCH CHAPTER I THE THREE VISITS On a spring day, early in March of the next year, 1908, Mathew Cardinal thought that he would go and discover how his niece was prospering. He had seen nothing of her for a very long time. He did not blame himself for this, but then he never blamed himself for anything. A fate, often drunken and always imbecile, was to blame for everything that he did, and he pitied himself sincerely for having to be in the hands of such a creature. He happened to be just now very considerably frightened about himself, more frightened than he had been for a very long time, so frightened in fact that he had drunk nothing for weeks. For many years he had been leading a see-saw existence, and the see-saw had been swung by that mysterious force known as Finance. He had a real gift for speculation, and had he been granted from birth a large income he might have ended his days as a Justice of the Peace and a Member of Parliament. Unfortunately he had never had any private means, and he had never been able to make enough by his mysterious speculations to float him into security--"Let me once get so far," he would say to himself, "and I am a made man." But drink, an easy tolerance of bad company, and a rather touching conceit had combined to divorce him from so fine a destiny. He had risen, he had fallen, made a good thing out of this tip, been badly done over that, and missed opportunity after opportunity through a fuddled brain and an overweening self-confidence.