There was no answer. A pale-faced little girl lifted the latch of the door and looked timorously out into the cold and the blackness. The gale caught her and for a moment she almost choked for breath. It was still intensely dark, no colour of the day was yet in the sky. The wind whistled shrilly round the corners of the cabin and a storm-swept bird dropped to the ground in front of the child. She looked back into the gloomy interior of the cabin and for a moment thought of returning. She was very hungry, but remembered her father and brother who would presently come in from the fishing, probably, as they had come in for days, with empty boats and empty stomachs. Another fit of coughing seized the mother, and the girl went out, shutting the door carefully behind her to stay the wrath of the wind which swept violently across the floor of the house.
The sea was near. The tide, sweeping sullenly away from the shore, moaned plaintively near the land and swelled into loud discordant wrath, far out at the bar. All round the house a tremulous gray haze enveloped everything, and the child stole into its mysterious bosom and towards the sea. The sleet shot sharply across her body and at times she turned round to save her face from its stinging lash. She was so small, so frail, so tender that she might be swept away at any moment as she moved like a shadow through the greyness, keeping a keen lookout for the ghosts that peopled the mists and the lonely places. Of these phantoms she was assured. To her they were as true as her own mother, as her own self. They were around and above her. They hid in the mists, walked on the sea, roved in the fields, and she was afraid of them.
Suddenly she called to mind the story of the Lone Woman of the Mist, the ghost whom all the old people of the locality had met at some time or another in their lives. Even as she thought, an apparition took form, a lone woman stood in front of the little girl, barely ten paces away. The child crossed herself seven times and walked straight ahead, keeping her eyes fixed on the figure that barred the path. This was the only thing to be done; under the steady look of the eyes a ghost is powerless. So her mother had told her, and the girl, knowing this, never lowered her gaze; but her bare feet got suddenly warm, her heart leapt as if wanting to leave her body, and the effort to restrain the tremor of her eyelids caused her pain. The ghost spoke.
“Who is the girsha[A] that is out so early?” came the question.
“It’s me, Norah Ryan,” answered the child in a glad voice. “I thought that ye were the Lone Woman of the Mist or maybe a beanshee.”[B]
“I’m not the beanshee, I’m the beansho,”[C] the woman replied in a sharp voice. “D’ye know what that means?”
“It means that ye are the woman I’m not to have the civil word with because ye’ve committed a great sin.”
“Who said that? Was it yer mother?”
“Then it was,” said the child, “I often heard her say them words.”
“D’ye know me sin then?” enquired the woman, and without waiting for an answer she went on: “Ye don’t, of course. This is me sin, girsha; this is me sin. Look at it!”