Taking him by the arm, I led him towards the seemingly frail but fiercely implacable being who had wrought so much havoc, and whose broken body now lay amid the rubble of the devastated house. She was spread-eagled on her back, her eyes closed, her breathing harsh and intensely labored. A substantial quantity of blood had issued from her partially opened mouth and was oozing down her chin.

After silently gazing upon her visage—bathed in the ghostly luminosity of the moon—Crockett gasped: “Well, I’ll be hornswoggled! Is that … her?”

“Yes,” I solemnly replied. “The analysis that I set forth prior to your departure this evening has proven to be entirely accurate. You see before you the pitiless and intensely prolific multi-murderer we have been seeking. Nevertheless, in spite of the numerous atrocities for which she is responsible—not least of which were her foiled attempts to slay both you and myself only minutes ago—I cannot help but feel an oppressive sense of sadness at her imminent demise. For this wretched, unappeasable being is none other than my own long-lost and previously unsuspected half-sister—Lenore.”

“I wish I may be shot if she ain’t the spitting image of you,” Crockett marvelled. “But how in the nation did she come to be here?”

Before I could reply to this query, the fatally injured young woman stirred slightly at our feet—opened her eyes—fixed her dying gaze upon me—and endeavored to speak. Her voice being barely audible, I crouched at her side and bent an ear close to her lips—whereupon she murmured a statement I immediately recognized as the concluding words of the underscored passage in Joseph Glanvill’s treatise:

“Man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will!”

Then, as if overcome with an unbearable exhaustion, she closed her eyes, exhaled a long, tremulous sigh—and ceased to respire!

“I reckon she is a goner, ol’ hoss,” said Crockett consolingly, as I rose unsteadily to my feet. “What was them words she mumbled before she croaked?”

Shaking violently in every limb, I repeated Glanvill’s observation to the frontiersman.

“Why, what in the nation does it mean?” he asked, his brow knit in puzzlement.