Then the sounds passed, and her nerves steadied, and presently a stirring night breeze rustled the lank grass. It came over the plain toward her. It reached her window and fanned her cheeks with its chill breath. Then it passed, sighing round an angle of the house. Then, in its wake, came the plaintive dole of a scavenging coyote. The combination, to her fancy, was an echo of her feelings. It was the sigh of despair, and the cry of a lost soul. Presently the drowse of utter weariness descended upon her. The dread of thought remained heavily overshadowing, but a certain distortion displayed the reaching of limits beyond which human power could not go, even in suffering. It was a merciful nature asserting itself. Her eyes closed, slowly, gently, with a drowsy helplessness. Once her elbow slipped from the sill of the window and awoke her. A somnolent thought that she would go to bed passed dully through her mind. But she did not act upon it. She propped her head upon her hand once more, and, in a moment, everything was forgotten. She awoke with a start. There was no drowse in her wakefulness now. Her eyes were wide, and her thoughts alert. The sensation of a blow, a light, unforceful blow was still tingling through her nerves. The blow, it seemed, had fallen upon her forehead, and she thrust a hand up mechanically to the spot. But the action yielded her no enlightenment. There was no pain, no sign. She peered through the open window and realized that the moon had risen. She stared at it, and presently it occurred to her that she must have slept, and, by the position of the moon above the horizon, for at least an hour. Then her thoughts returned to the blow which had awakened her, and the conclusion followed that it must have been the result of the half-blind flight of one of those great winged beetles. She closed the window abruptly. She closed the second one. Then, having drawn the curtains, she fumbled for the matches and lit the candles upon her dressing bureau. It was her intention to search for the intruding beetle, and then retire. But her search terminated abruptly. It terminated even as it began. That which had struck her was lying almost at her feet upon the soft rug on which she stood, and within a yard of where she had been sitting. It was a piece of paper tied about a small ball of soil. She stared down at it for some startled moments. The effects of her dread were still upon her, and they set up a sort of panic which made her fearful of touching the missile. But it could not remain there uninspected. There could be no thought of retiring without learning the meaning of what lay there on the floor. Gingerly she stooped with a candle in her hand. She stooped lower, but making no attempt to touch the thing which had disturbed her. The candle revealed a folded sheet of white paper. A string bound it round the rooted portion of a grass tuft.