Walker was gone, and she had not been able to help him. He had died of snakes, just as the old witch-woman had predicted when he was a little boy. Poor Wolf had not been able to help, either--probably he had not even awaked from his senile stupor. And now the crawling things must be coming for her, writhing closer and closer every moment in the dark, perhaps even now twining slipperily about the bed-posts and oozing up over the coarse woolen blankets. Unconsciously she crept under the clothes and trembled. It must be the curse of Yig. He had sent his monstrous children on All-Hallows' Night, and they had taken Walker first. Why was that--wasn't he innocent enough? Why not come straight for her--hadn't she killed those little rattlers alone? Then she thought of the curse's form as told by the Indians. She wouldn't be killed--just turned to a spotted snake. Ugh! So she would be like those things she had glimpsed on the floor--those things which Yig had sent to get her and enroll her among their number! She tried to mumble a charm that Walker had taught her, but found she could not utter a single sound. The noisy ticking of the alarm-clock sounded above the maddening beat of the distant tom-toms. The snakes were taking a long time--did they mean to delay on purpose to play on her nerves? Every now and then she thought she felt a stealthy, insidious pressure on the bedclothes, but each time it turned out to be only the automatic twitchings of her overwrought nerves. The clock ticked on in the dark, and a change came slowly over her thoughts. Those snakes _couldn't_ have taken so long! They couldn't be Yig's messengers after all, but just natural rattlers that were nested below the rock and had been drawn there by the fire. They weren't coming for her, perhaps--perhaps they had sated themselves on poor Walker. Where were they now? Gone? Coiled by the fire? Still crawling over the prone corpse of their victim? The clock ticked, and the distant drums throbbed on. At the thought of her husband's body lying there in the pitch blackness a thrill of purely physical horror passed over Audrey. That story of Sally Compton's about the man back in Scott County! He, too, had been bitten by a whole bunch of rattlesnakes, and what had happened to him? The poison had rotted the flesh and swelled the whole corpse, and in the end the bloated thing had _burst_ horribly--burst horribly with a detestable _popping_ noise. Was that what was happening to Walker down there on the rock floor? Instinctively she felt that she had begun to _listen_ for something too terrible even to name to herself.