“What penalty?”
“Thou knowest the law.”
Sighing again, bitterly, Asenath stretched out her hand. The square of light went out. Across the spot where it had been, drifted indistinct forms which passed into invisibility on either side. Under their feet ran a serpent of fire, which leaped at the woman. She grasped it, and it seemed to become the rod she had cast down.
I remembered nothing more until I came slowly to myself, stretched upon the bench in the shrubbery, with the morning sun shining into my face. My limbs were stiff, my head ached, and my heart was heavy with a foreboding of evil. It was impossible for me to decide whether the experience of the night was a dream or a reality, but I was sorely troubled; I could not think of Asenath without a creeping of the flesh.
On approaching the house, I saw Robert standing in the doorway. My first glimpse of him set me to trembling with fear of evil tidings, he looked so agitated and distressed. When he perceived me, he wrung his hands and burst into tears.
“Oh, Tom!” he cried, “Helen is dying. She was taken with convulsions early this morning. She does not know me. The baby was born dead, and Helen can not live. I must lose her! Oh, God, I must lose her!”
He ran through the hall and up the stairs, like a wild man. I followed, but the heaviness of the shock was so great that it was but slowly and with a feeling as if the floor was rising up to my face. Asenath was moving stealthily about the hall. I bade her begone. She looked at me like a startled cat, but did not go. A black girl, coming down the stairs, passed me, and I recognized her as the first of the women who had joined our ghastly crowd the night before. She gazed straight before her, with wide-open, horrified eyes, and her face had the same pinched look the hall mirror had shown me upon my own as I glanced into it involuntarily when passing it. At the top of the stairs, Belinda, Helen’s poor little maid, flung herself at my feet and clasped my knees.
“Oh, Massa Tom,” she cried, “she am ’witched. Go an’ git d’ witch doctah t’—tak’—de spell off’n her. Nuffin’ll save her ef yo’ don’t do dat.”
As I stopped to put the poor creature aside, old Mammy Clara, her face streaming with tears, came up to me.
“Massa Tom,” she said, solemnly, “de good God hab tooken Miss Helen. She’s in heben wid her li’l’ baby.”