And those who always prayed, still prayed the more."
The inscrutable woman who caused such general dismay in the parish was
an object of much pity. Avoided, feared, and detested, she could find
no rest for her weary feet, nor any shelter for her unprotected head. If
she was seen approaching a house, the door and windows were immediately
closed against her; if met on the way she was avoided as a pestilence.
How she lived no one could tell, for none would permit themselves to
know. It was asserted that she existed without meat or drink, and that
she was doomed to remain possessed of life, the prey of hunger and
thirst, until she could get some one weak enough to break the spell by
drinking her hellish draught, to taste which, they said, would be to
change places with herself, and assume her despair and misery.
There had lived in the country about six months before her appearance
in it, a man named Stephenson. He was unmarried, and the last of his
family. This person led a solitary and secluded life, and exhibited
during the last years of his existence strong symptoms of eccentricity,
which, for some months before his death, assumed a character of
unquestionable derangement. He was found one morning hanging by a halter
in his own stable, where he had, under the influence of his malady,
committed suicide.
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