"Dead—;" Kurz's voice droned shaking.
He saw the old woman go to the table.
He and Kurz watched her take the lamp up in her hands. He and Kurz saw her fingers fumbling at the wick. Kurz's quivering face stood out in the lamplight. The old woman was smiling quietly.
They saw her try to put out the light.
The lamp still burned.
"Mutter-Schwegel—is—dead—!" Kurz's voice quavered; and then it screamed. "Dead—," he shrieked; "we—are—all—of—us—dead—!"
That uncertain feeling came over him. And suddenly it went quite from him.
HAUNTED
He lived quite alone in the stone built shanty perched on the highest pinnacle of the great sun bleached chalk cliffs. All about him, as far as the eye could reach, lay the flat, salt marshes with their dank, yellowed grasses. Against the inland horizon three, gaunt, thin-foliaged trees reared themselves from the monotonously even soil. Overhead the cloud splotched blue gray sky, and below him the changing, motion pulled, current swirling depths of the blue green sea. And at all times of the day and the night, the wild whirring of the sea gulls' wings and the uncanny inhuman piercing sound of their shrieking.