As she stepped over the threshold, Mrs. Sharland, who was seated by the fire, turned and observed her. The widow rose at once with a look of distress in her face, and advanced towards her, holding out her hand.
'Where is George?' asked Mrs. De Witt, ignoring the outstretched palm, in a hard, impatient tone.
'George!' echoed Mehalah, standing still, 'George is dead.'
'What nonsense!' said Mrs. De Witt, catching the girl by the shoulder and shaking her.
'I saw him. He is dead.' She quivered like an aspen.
The blood had ebbed behind her brown skin. Her eyes looked in Mrs. De Witt's face with a flash of agony in them.
'He came and looked in at the window at me, and cast me back the keepsake I had given him, and which he swore not to part with while life lasted.'
'Dear sackalive!' exclaimed Mrs. De Witt; 'the girl is dreaming or demented. What is the meaning of all this, Mistress Sharland?'
'Last night,' explained the widow, 'as Mehalah was sitting here in the dark, some one came to the window, stove it in—look how the lead is torn, and the glass fallen out—and cast at the feet of Mehalah a medal she had given George on Thursday. She thinks,' added the old woman in a subdued tone, 'that what she saw was his spirit.'
Mrs. De Witt was awed. She was not a woman without superstition, but she was not one to allow a supernatural intervention till all possible prosaic explanations had been exhausted.