One night she sat at the wheel, by which she earned her daily bread; the lamp burned low as she worked and waited in her cabin, beneath those walls which had grown old like herself, in solitude and grief, the silent witnesses of her mysterious wedding-night. She thought anxiously of her son, whose presence, ardently desired as it was, would recall much sorrow, perhaps bring more in its train. The poor mother loved her son, ungrateful as he was. And how could she help loving him, she had suffered so much for him?
She rose and took from an antique wardrobe a crucifix thickly coated with dust. For an instant she looked at it imploringly; then suddenly casting it from her in horror, she cried: “I pray! How can I pray? Your prayers can only be addressed to hell, poor woman! You belong to hell, and to hell alone.”
She had relapsed into her mournful revery, when there was a knock at the door.
This was a rare event with Widow Stadt. For many long years, in consequence of the strange incidents connected with her history, the whole village of Thoctree believed that she had dealings with evil spirits; no one therefore ever ventured near her hut,—strange superstitions of that age and ignorant region! She owed to her misfortunes the same reputation for witchcraft that the keeper of the Spladgest owed to his learning.
“What if it were my son, if it were Gill!” she exclaimed; and she rushed to the door.
Alas! it was not her son. It was a little monk clad in serge, his cowl covering all of his face but a black beard.
“Holy man,” said the widow, “what would you have? You do not know the house to which you come.”
“Yes, truly!” replied the hermit in a hoarse and all too familiar voice.
And tearing off his gloves, his black beard, and his cowl, he revealed a fierce countenance, a red beard, and a pair of hands armed with tremendous claws.
“Oh!” cried the widow, burying her head in her hands.