Forde stooped to pick up the red skull with mixed feelings. He wondered how it had come into possession of the idiot, and what strange thought in the madman’s brains led him to believe that Polwin could be cursed in connection with so weird an object. But as he touched the Death’s Head Morgan flung himself forward, and snatching it from him with a guttural cry, bounded on to a moderately high rock near the cabin with the leap of a cat, and sat there nursing the uncanny relic of humanity with a cunning and dangerous expression. Forde, taken by surprise, stared motionless.

‘Ah,’ said Mrs. Carney, tottering forward and mumbling as usual, ‘he’s fond of that, is Morgan: it’s like a doll to a lass.’

‘How did he obtain possession of it?’ asked the barrister; ‘it belonged to Polwin — it is connected with the murder.’

‘Polwin!’ repeated the old woman, squatting down on her hams like a savage; ‘he’s my son’s friend. I’ve never set eyes on him myself, but Hugh likes him.’

‘Anak, you mean?’

‘My son’s name is Hugh, as was his father’s before him,’ mumbled the crone, ‘though they do call him Anak from the size of him. Aye, there are giants in these days, though it’s after the Flood instead of before it. Not but what folk are marrying and drinking and sinning now, as they did then, young sir.’

‘You remember me, Mrs. Carney?’

‘Aye. You’re the young gentleman who knocked down Anak — if you will call him so. And clever you are to do that seeing how big he is, Mr. Forde. Well, well, there are worse sons than Anak, for he keeps his old mother like a queen, bless him.’

The idiot still moped and mowed on the rock, fondling the skull.

Oswald glanced from him to Mrs. Carney, and from that unsightly old creature to the miserable hut which she called home. Her notion of being kept like a queen was indeed sordid, and he wondered how she could endure so wretched an existence, especially as he discerned in her manner and speech, that which argued that she had not always occupied so lowly a condition. Forde involuntarily put a leading question to her:

‘What is your past, Mrs. Carney?’

The beldam looked up, and her black eyes, brilliant as those of a young girl, flashed angrily. Her face was wrinkled and yellow and not over-clean, her hair was white, her body was bowed, and her brown hands were like the claws of a bird — a vulture’s for choice. Also her nose and chin nearly met, and she looked exactly like the bad fairy of a child’s book. Yet in those eyes shone the fierce, free spirit of inextinguishable youth, and Forde would not have been surprised had she dropped her worn body like a ragged garment and shone out a nymph of grace. Those eyes should have been set as jewels in the face of a young and lovely woman. Now they sent out lightnings towards Forde because of his indiscreet question.

‘What’s my past got to do with you, young man?’

Oswald shrugged his shoulders. ‘Nothing; only you seem to have seen better days.’

‘Aye, that I have, but I don’t tell you anything about them,’ grumbled Mrs. Carney, and then, with the inconsistency of old age, she at once began to mumble out her life story. At first she spoke almost too softly for Forde to hear, so he waited until she warmed up before giving her his entire attention. Lighting his pipe, he sat down on a stone near the door of the hut and watched the squatting figure of the aged witch — for witch she was, if looks went for anything, as they assuredly did in the middle ages when an old woman was required to be tar-barrelled. Morgan, humming weird songs to himself, still played fantastically with his gruesome toy, and everywhere the earth was growing warm and bright under the influence of the newly-risen sun.

‘Aye, aye!’ muttered Mrs. Carney, plucking at the fringe of her ragged skirt. ‘I was pretty once: no girl prettier, but that Trevick man he made me hate everyone.’

‘Did he do you wrong?’ asked Forde softly, so as not to break the current of her thoughts.

‘He! No. No one ever did me wrong,’ cried the old hag, ‘I was too clever for them all. Sir Hannibal — drat the man for a false lover — he wanted me to run away with him. But I said marriage or nothing; yes, I said that — no wrongdoing for the prettiest girl in St. Ewalds, or out of it, for the matter of that. But he wouldn’t. Bless you, those Trevicks think a heap of themselves, and he looked on me as dirt. On me,’ cried Mrs. Carney, rising, and her voice leaping an octave, ‘me, who was a lady’s maid, and was well educated as a companion to gentry. Aye. I knew French at one time, and could play the piano and paint on velvet, and do things the like of which are never heard of nowadays. But Trevick left me to go to London, and never came back. Out of sight, out of mind with him. Oh, deary me.’ She hid her hands under her apron and stared at the glimpse of blue sea seen between the rocks, viewing probably in her mind’s eye the golden days of her distant youth.

Forde made no remark, knowing that she would recommence the story after a time, and anxious to hear all that she could say about herself.

‘Yes,’ went on the old woman, still gazing at the ocean, ‘he left me, did Trevick, but I wasn’t one to pine away for such as he. Oh, no, not at all. There were lots of them, and when Miss Gyles — she that I was companion to — got married, I could pick and choose a handsome man as well as she. And I did. I picked out the ugliest of the bunch. Lord knows why I did it,’ muttered the witch, rubbing her beaky nose; ‘he wasn’t tall nor fine-looking, and he wasn’t rich. I couldn’t get Trevick, but Bowring was willing to make me his wife, though I never could abear him. Nor Carney either, for the matter of that. But he got round me in his wheedling way and we were married. Then he left me to starve,’ said Mrs. Carney angrily, ‘with Hugh a babe at the breast.’

‘Where did he go?’ asked Forde idly.

‘Lord knows, young man. He disappeared like a drop of water over five and twenty years ago, if not more, and never have I set eyes on him since — no, never.’

‘He may be dead.’

‘Dead!’ echoed the hag with a screech; ‘men like Carney never die, I can tell you, young sir. Good men die, pretty babes die, strong wenches die, but the devil looks after his own, and Carney was the son of Old Nick, for all his wheedling and pious talk. Well, he’s gone’— she flung her apron over her head, rocking to and fro in her grief —‘and I’m left here like a bare stone on the hillside.’

Forde looked at the grey stone walls of the hut, with the moss and lichens growing in the cracks; at the thatched roof of dried grass and fern; at the small window and crazy door, and pitied the pair who dwelt there. Anak certainly could look after himself, and was strong enough to laugh at the weather when living in such a tumbledown house, but Mrs. Carney was frail and looked decidedly ill.

‘How did you come so low?’ asked the barrister.

Mrs. Carney tore the apron from her head and looked at him angrily as she stamped her foot.

‘Low!’ she screamed. ‘I’d have you know as I’d rather live here than in a palace. I’m free here, and I can work spells and everyone fears me for a witch.’

‘Oh, that’s rubbish,’ said Forde easily.

‘Oh, is it?’— she looked at him malignantly —‘well, you’ll see. Day and night have I cursed Carney, and he’ll surely be drawn back to me by the spell. Then I’ll stab him, and poison him, and crush him, and make him long for a death that won’t come until he has endured the pangs he made me endure. Oh,’ she shook her fist impotently at the calm sky, ‘I could tear him to bits, the beast, the wretch.’

‘What else could I do?’ inquired Mrs. Carney with a scowl; ‘I was left without a penny and with a babe. I tried to earn money, but those who were jealous of me kept me out of employment. Then I took to telling fortunes, and did a rare trade until the law turned me out of St. Ewalds years and years ago. I came here to be near the quarries, where Hugh could work, and I’ve lived here, sun and rain, wet and fine, these fifteen and more years.’

Forde rose, and putting his pipe into his pocket, yawned. It was about time that he started back to St. Ewalds, but before departing he wished to learn how the skull had come into the possession of the idiot. As a means of unloosening Mrs. Carney’s tongue regarding the doings of Morgan, with whom she seemed to be so well acquainted, and because he was truly hungry, he took half a sovereign from his pocket.

‘I’ll give you this, Mrs. Carney, for a breakfast.’

The witch grabbed it, bit it to see if the gold was genuine, and laughed as she tied it in a corner of her apron. ‘Ham and ............