The glimmer came from a neighbor's lamp shining through a gap in the trees.

Soon that also went out, and the old woman sat there in total darkness.
She folded her hands primly, and held up her bonneted head in the darkness, like some decorous and formal caller who might expect at any moment to hear the soft, heavy step of the host upon the creaking stair and his voice in the room.

She sat there so all night.
Gradually this steady-headed, unimaginative old woman became possessed by a legion of morbid fancies, which played like wild fire over the terrible main fact of the case--the fact that underlay everything--that she had sinned, that she had gone over from good to evil, and given up her soul for a handful of gold.

Many a time in the night, voices which her straining fancy threw out, after the manner of ventriloquism, from her own brain, seemed actually to vibrate through the house, footsteps pattered, and garments rustled.

Often the phantom noises would swell to a very pandemonium surging upon her ears; but she sat there rigid and resolute in the midst of it, her pale old face sharpening out into the darkness.