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cast a fleeting glance at her husband’s body. Her brow knitted in pain.
    Both men had stood at her entrance. Matthew remained standing while John Waite walked over and leaned against the mantel as though to warm his backsides by the fire. Margaret Waite sat down and invited Matthew to do likewise.
    “I prayed for sleep, but my prayers went unanswered,” she said after an awkward silence. Matthew leaned forward and regarded the widow intently. She had begun to cry softly and plucked at the loose hairs about her ears and neck.
    “I am most sorry for your husband’s death,” Matthew said in an effort to console the woman. “Malcolm was a good man, a just man. He will be much missed.”
    “Missed?” she replied, laughing bitterly through her tears. “Missed by his wife, his sons. None other. He was ruined, Mr. Stock. You know that. By the way, did John tell you how my husband died, the horrible manner of it?”
    “He said there was a . . . manifestation of some sort.”
    “Manifestation indeed,” she asserted, snorting, then glancing reproachfully at her nephew as though she expected him to confute her claim. Not responding, he turned his back to her and began to warm his hands at the fire as if the apparition and the terror it had caused were the farthest things from his mind. “It was she ,” Margaret reiterated to Matthew in a hoarse whisper.
    “She?”
    “The witch.”
    “Ursula Tusser? So your nephew told me.”
    “He doesn’t believe me,” Margaret said.
    Matthew heard the nephew heave a cynical sigh. So John Waite was paying attention, after all.
    “I saw, myself,” Margaret said.
    “You saw the ghost?”
    “I did.”
    “Where?” Matthew looked around the room.
    Margaret twisted in her chair and pointed a shaking finger toward the window. She spoke slowly and with a tremor: “Malcolm and I were sitting here conversing and reading, our custom of an evening. Suddenly there came a little incessant rap at the window, like someone begging to come in. We both heard it—I first, but he, laying his book aside, rose, went to the window, and drew the curtain to see who or what thing it was there. The next moment, I heard him gasp, as though seized with a sudden pain, then cry out a most strange and ungodly scream. It was as though the air had been half sucked from him, and with what little remained he blurted out an appeal to heaven. I remember his exact words.
    I never shall forget them. ‘Oh, Jesus God,’ he said. ‘It’s she. Forgive my treachery.’
    “I jumped up and ran to my husband, who had fallen back in his chair. He was muttering incomprehensibly. His eyes were rolling in his head. He didn’t seem to recognize me. I went to the window. Without a thought of danger to myself,
    I pulled the curtain back to see what he had seen. Oh, horrible! It was the face—the girl to the life. Her visage, pressed to the pane, was pale and ghastly. The lips were curled in a vengeful smile. Too terrified to scream, I turned again to my husband and saw now that the vision had been the death of him.”
    Margaret broke off her narrative and hid her face in her hands, while her nephew, who was now pacing the room, stopped long enough to pour her a drink and encourage her to regain control of herself. Matthew walked over to the window to peer out into the darkness. He started at his own     1
    reflection, a wide, fleshy face with deep-set eyes. He shaded the light and could see dimly. The Waites’ barn loomed beyond the garden.
    “Her face appeared at this window?” Matthew asked. Margaret nodded. “I saw” she repeated.
    “Aunt Margaret, Ursula Tusser has been dead a month, six weeks,” said John Waite in an impatient tone of voice.
    “Had she been dead a year or twain, a century or more, yet she was at the window this night,” Margaret pronounced solemnly. “My husband saw her and the sight killed him. His last words seared my soul. Her face was as it was while