The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (6.1895)

The Crimson Weaver

By R. Murray Gilchrist

y Master and I had wandered from our track and lost


1VI ourselves on the side of a great “ edge.” It was a two-
days’ journey from the Valley of the Willow Brakes, and we had
roamed aimlessly ; eating at hollow-echoing inns where grey-
haired hostesses ministered, and sleeping side by side through the
dewless midsummer nights on beds of fresh-gathered heather.
Beyond a single-arched wall-less bridge that crossed a brown
stream whose waters leaped straight from the upland, we reached
the Domain of the Crimson Weaver. No sooner had we reached
the keystone when a beldam, wrinkled as a walnut and bald as an
eg<r, crept from a cabin of turf and osier and held out her hands
in warning.
“Enter not the Domain of the Crimson Weaver!” she
shrieked. “One I loved entered.—I am here to warn men.
Behold, I was beautiful once 1 ”
She tore her ragged smock apart and discovered the foulness of
her bosom, where the heart pulsed behind a curtain of livid skin.
My Master drew money from his wallet and scattered it on the
ground.
“She is mad,” he said. “The evil she hints cannot exist.
There is no fiend.”

So