“You are very cruel!” she moaned. “Who is that sleeping there? Perhaps it is Peter. I will wake him up; he will give me water. I am so thirsty.” She moaned and crooned over the three-legged caldron, stirring the sap feebly with the ladle in her efforts to wrest herself free, and the white steam curled about her face, and gave her the air of a young, beautiful witch bent over a caldron. Matt forgot everything except that he would like to make a picture of her as she appeared now.
“You’d best go to sleep,” he said at last, awakening to a remembrance of the strange situation. “There’s my bed—those fir-boughs—you kin lie down there till the mornin’, and I’ll cover you with my blanket.”
“I want water,” she crooned.
“You kin’t get it,” said Matt.
“Then may the curse light on you and yours,” she cried, stirring the sap more fiercely in her struggle, while the vapor and the wood smoke rose in denser volumes around her. “May you thirst and thirst, and never be satisfied! And that is to be your fate, Cousin Matt. I read it in your face, in your eyes. Never to quench your thirst—never, never, never! To thirst and thirst and thirst for everything, and never to be satisfied, never to have anything you want. Mad Matt and Mad Peggy—cousins, you and I! Ha! ha! ha!” Her laugh of malicious glee made the boy’s blood run cold. From without came the answering screech of a wild-cat.
“Lie down and rest!” repeated Matt, imperatively.
“What! stay here with you? No, no, no, Cousin Matt. I know what you want. You want to paint me and put me on the wall among the devils! No, no, I must be off to find Peter. I shall stay with him in his cabin.”
Her grip of the dipper relaxed; it reeled against the side of the pot. She turned away, and Matt let go her arm and watched her, spellbound. She drew the thick dun shawl over her head, again veiling the glory of the golden hair, and almost brought the edges together over her sad beautiful face, so that the eyes alone shone out with unearthly radiance. Then she moved slowly towards the door and thrust it open, and the wind came in, and filled the entire cabin with heavy, acrid smoke, which got into Matt’s eyes and throat, and woke even the Indian boy, who sat up choking and rubbing his black, beady eyes.
“Dam door shuttum!” he cried, with unusual vehemence.
The words broke Matt’s spell. He rushed to the door, but his smarting eyes could detect no gray-shawled figure gliding among the gray trunks. He closed the door, wondering if he had been dreaming.