Saying this, she crouched low between Crabbe and Brimbecomb, and, encircling each neck with an arm, thrust her face down close between them.

Lon Cronk’s old clock on the shelf ticked out the minutes into the somberness of the hut.  The waves of the lake, breaking ceaselessly upon the shore, softened the harsh, uneven croaks of the marsh-frogs with their harmony.  Through the broken window drifted the night noises, and the wind fluttered the candle-flame weakly.  Suddenly Screech Owl thought she heard a voice—­a voice filled with tender sympathy and pathos.  Without disengaging her arms, she lifted herself and searched with dim eyes even the corners of the hut.  Misty forms shaded to ghost-gray seemed to steal out and group themselves about her dead.  She took her arm from Everett and brushed back the straggling locks that blurred her sight.

The voice spoke again, pronouncing her name in low, even tones.  Once more she wound her arm about Everett, and pressed herself down between her beloveds.  Her eyes, protruding and fearful, saw the candlelight grow dimmer.

“Lemmy, Lemmy,” she gasped between hard-coming breaths, “I’m comin’ after ye and our pretty boy!  Wherever ye both be—­I come—­”

A film gathered over Scraggy’s eyes, and her words were cut short by the pain of the intermittent flutterings of her heart.  She fell lower, and with a last weak effort drew the heads closer together.  Then Scraggy’s spirit, which had ever sought her lover and her son, took flight out into the vast expanse of the universe, to find Everett and Lem.

* * * * *

Governor Vandecar bent over his wife.

“Darling,” he murmured, “I have brought you back your other baby.  Won’t you turn and—­look at—­her?”

Fledra was standing at her father’s side, and now for an instant she looked down into the blue eyes through which she saw the yearning heart of her mother.  Then she knelt down with Floyd, and they rested their heads in tearful silence under the hands of these dear ones, who trembled with thankfulness.

The last fifteen years flashed as a panorama across the governor’s mind.  That day he had discharged his debt to Lon Cronk by placing the squatter where his diseased mind could be treated, and he had insisted that his own name and home should be Katharine’s, the same as of yore.  It was not until Mildred opened the door and entered hesitantly that he raised his head.  Silently he held out his arms and drew his baby girl into them.

* * * * *

Horace’s first duty when he returned to Tarrytown was to make Ann as comfortable as he could.  She had borne up well under the tragedy, and smiled at him bravely as he left for Vandecar’s.  The governor met him in the hall and drew him into his library.

“I must speak with you, boy, before—­”

“Then I may talk with Fledra?”

The governor hesitated.