Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/62

54 of one and the opening of another, my father bought a gun, and went over a hedge with it on a moonlight night, and the trigger caught."

Arminell rose.

"I have been here for some time," she said, "and I ought to be on my way home. You will permit me"—she felt in her pocket for her purse.

"No," said Patience curtly. "You have paid me for what I did by listening to my story. But stay—Have you heard that if you go to a pixy mound, and take the soil thereof and put it on your head, you can see the little people, and hear their voices, and know all they say and do. You have come here—to this heap of ruin and wretchedness," she stooped and gathered up some of the dust off the floor and ashes from the hearth, and threw them on the head of Arminell. "I am a witch, they say. It is well; now your eyes and ears are opened to see and know and feel with those you never knew of before this day—another kind of creatures to yourself—the poor, the wretched, the lonely."