Topping a rise Isabel began to descend. Here the descent was steep, fell swiftly to a combe bottomed by a small copse. By the quickened pace of her Brigid believed she saw her journey’s end in sight. Her own heart beat faster; fatigue in part forgotten, interest stirred anew. At the bottom of the combe she saw a light, steady in the shadow under the hillside. Where there is a light there must needs be some creature to kindle the light; this was Brigid’s judging. Yet who should dwell in that lonely place? And why, greater matter for surmise, should Isabel seek the dweller there? That she did seek him or her was very certain, since unfaltering she made her way towards the light. It came, Brigid now marked, from a mud hovel; the flame gleamed yellow through an aperture in the wall. Isabel went up to the door, knocked. Brigid crouched breathless in the shadow of a bush. On the instant the flame was extinguished. The aperture sank back into the darkness of the wall. Brigid caught the murmur of Isabel’s voice speaking. The door was opened cautiously. In the space she saw a woman’s figure, bent, the head thrust forward. The moonlight falling on her face showed her of great age. The toothless mouth trembled and mumbled; the bleary eyes peered upwards from deep sockets; scant white locks fell across them. There came to her ear a further low murmur of words. Next Isabel entered the hovel; the door was shut. Brigid sprang to her feet, the riddle well-nigh answered. Witchery of some sort Isabel had come to seek, white or black, it mattered little. White, it turned black in the fingering; black, it changed to very filth. Here she read the meaning of the oppression which had fallen upon her, which had held her wakeful. “St. Brigid to her aid and mine,” she whispered, making for the window, peering cautiously within. To make her presence known, to attempt persuasion in the matter, would be worse than fruitless; that she well knew. She had not served Isabel three years for nothing. Her chin level with the window ledge, her eyes sought the interior of the hovel. In the dim glow of a peat fire she saw the room; a bare place enough, mud-floored, full of cobwebs and the thick scent of peat smoke. This scent and others more unwholesome caused a very vile odour. In one corner was a heap of heather and dried skins; across another, suspended by a frayed rope, hung a tattered curtain. A table, a bench, a chair on which sat Isabel, a stool for the hag, made up the furniture of the place. The two were sitting by the hearth; Isabel upright, distaste very much in her bearing; the hag crouching towards the fire, holding claw-like hands to the warmth, muttering the while. Presently the muttering gave place to words. “Greed, greed,” came the mumbled speech. “Thou hast much; what more dost thou desire?” “That which eludes me.” The sound of the even, familiar voice in the vile-smelling place caused Brigid’s heart to beat anew.