And the other, pointing accusingly to the girl who lay before them, her face hidden in her arms, replied: 

“The night my baby died . . .  I heard her voice.”

They stood in silence, rigid, implacable, bitter.

During the latter dark days a terrible calamity had made itself felt among the tribe.  This was the death of many of the newly born.  Outside the igloos during the past months, as the babies had come, the number of tiny mounds had increased, and when the aurora flooded the skies heart-broken mothers could be seen weeping over these graves of snow.  It is not uncommon in this land for babies to die at birth or come prematurely; but the number of recent deaths and tragic accidents to expectant mothers was unprecedented.  This was undoubtedly due to the depleted vitality of the starving mothers—­but to the natives there was some other, some unaccountable, some sinister, cause.  In their hearts they experienced, each time a new mound rose white in the moonlight, that tremulous terror of a people who instinctively fear extinction.  The grief of a mother was for a personal loss; to the tribe each death meant an even greater, more significant loss, a thing of more than personal consequence.

And when, out of the dim regions of her brain, one of the women now conjured the terrible thing which she whispered concerning Annadoah, it was little wonder the other two regarded the girl as a thing hateful and accursed.

“She stealeth souls!”

Nothing more frightful could have been said.

“Yea, the night my baby died I heard her voice,” repeated Inetlia angrily.

And the other, among the superstitious voices in her memory, found it not difficult to recall a similar thing: 

“Methinks I heard her sing the night my own little one came—­too soon.”

And the third whispered: 

“She is as the hungry hill spirit who feasts upon the entrails of the dead.  Yea, she carrieth off the souls of the children. Ioh! Iooh!”

Their voices rose in a maniacal cry of terror and denunciation.

Annadoah rose.  Clasping her hands, she demanded piteously: 

“Why . . . sayest ye this of me?”

And they shrieked: 

“Thou stealest souls!  By the angakoq shalt thou be accursed!”

“No, no!  No, no!” the girl pleaded, falling on her knees and weeping.

Although they suddenly ceased their reviling, hearing outside the barking of dogs, the women thereafter in secret often assembled together; there were ominous whisperings; and each time a child died visits were paid to the angakoq, and the unseen powers were invoked to bring misfortune to Annadoah.

Outside the silenced women detected the barking of dogs approaching the village from the distance.  They heard the excited calls of tribesmen and the chatter of other women.  One by one they crept from the igloo.  A strange light in her eyes, Annadoah followed.