Her veins throbbed ever hotter and fiercer. Her time was come. Revenge was in her hands. What fever could be more virulent, more deadly, than the fever that dark-haired girl had set raging in her veins? What was the verse that she had read only last night to Aunt Tishy out of what the old negress called “de Holy Wud?” An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Joe Scott was not the only person she had ever heard speak of such a thing. It had simply served to recall it to her mind. Ha! ha! She had never liked Joe Scott before, and she had been very rude about those johnny-jump-ups. Poor Joe! She would thank him the very best she knew how when next she saw him. Poor Joe! good Joe! dear Joe! Yes, there it was, the pretty bassinet cradle, with its faded blue and pink ribbons. That little English baby had died full four years ago. She walked towards it, shielding the candle with one scooped hand from the playful assaults of the night wind. The cradle stood just in front of an old hair-covered chest. As she neared it, a consciousness of eyes regarding her came upon her. Ah! there they were. A rat, paralyzed for the moment by the sudden light, had paused on the edge of the old chest, and fixed her with his little, protruding, evil-looking eyes. She made a spasmodic, terrified movement with her hand, and he leaped down, his sleek, tight-skinned body striking the floor with a repulsive sound as of unsavorily nurtured corpulence. The girl turned with a strong, uncontrollable fit of shivering towards the cradle. It was rocking slowly back and forth in the uncertain light, its pink and blue ribbons fluttering with a ghostly and ill-timed gayety. A cry almost broke from between her gripped lips, but she remembered suddenly that the rat must have set it in motion when he leaped from the top of the chest. Setting the candle on the floor beside her, she stooped over and began lifting out the little sheets and blankets and bundles of linen and silk. One of those sudden noises which disturb sleep at night in an old house jarred through the room. She stuffed the things hastily back and looked behind her. Nothing there. But as her glance went round the room she saw before her, black, assertive, monstrous, the likeness of a huge cradle, cast by the candle against the whitewashed wall of the garret. Her heart beat with laboring, heavy thuds. If it were not quite so black, she thought, or if it had only been more the size of the real cradle; but its vast presence in the low-roofed room seemed like the presence of some presiding fate. She tore away her look from it by sheer force of will, found what she wanted, caught up the candle, and rushed headlong from the room. Miss Erroll received her with the same sweet smile. “You were pretty long,” she said. “I’m afraid I’ve given you a lot of trouble.”