"That's so that she can run. I'd rather have trees for shelter. You can slip from one to the other, and what they fling doesn't hit you if you are quick. There's less chance for you running. You'll be struck or caught. It's silly, that. She should take shelter when she can, and keep quiet; then they'll pass by, perhaps, without seeing you." "I'll be sure to tell her. But--but what are we talking about? Who would try to catch her? What need to--what were we talking about?" "Eh? I was saying I've trees before and behind my house. My grandfather planted them. We've been here for a long while, but I'm the last of us." Edward Webb brushed his forehead: he blinked. He had an impression that, made drowsy by the strong air of the mountains, he had been near falling asleep in the glow of the fire. "It's sad for a family to die out," he said; and the remark sounded foolishly in his ears. "Alexander's a good lad," she said, so that he understood the sequence of her thought. "He is, he is. But one is afraid for him." "Yes, there's trouble--a thick block of trouble on his way." He fluttered. "You--you are a prophetess?" "I can see sometimes, but there are dark places. They are mostly dark, and you must wait till the darkness lifts. I'm no witch. It's not for us to come across people's paths. But I can't help seeing things when they're shown. And that poor Rutherford fool--I told the truth to Alexander. For his wife's sake, I wished him back, but I don't know that it was my thinking brought him, for I did not think strong. I would not. Who am I to say he must turn this way or that? I'm not a witch, but Alexander likes to call me one. He's done it since he was a little chap and I told him tales. But I've known a witch, and she was an unhappy woman. She had power, but there were powers over her, and she was never rid of them. She was more witched than witching, she'd say to me, and warn me not to meddle. I was a girl then. She said when she went to sleep her eyelids would feel clogged with sin. That had a bad sound, and it frightened me. She was itching to teach me, and I itched to learn, but I had guidance. You wouldn't have known her for a witch. She had a rosy face, but if you looked into her eyes, you knew she did not see clean. She died twenty years ago, one night, sitting by the fire in Clara's kitchen." "Clara's!" "Yes; she lived there, and no one's lived there since till Clara came. It was a bad thing for James to get there, I sometimes think. You never know what's left and he's a poor empty vessel." "But the others?" Unwillingly, unreasonably, he thought, he was alarmed. "Oh, Clara's full and sweet, and Alexander's one to fill himself. And, anyway, what do we know--what do we know? I sit here thinking, and I breed fancies." She turned her sharp look on him. "You won't like sleeping in my house to-night." Fidgetting, he confessed: "I am a little nervous, and I think, if I may, I will go to bed."