In a tiny cottage, lost in a wild, desolate section of New England, Ellen Richards sits in a chair listening. Approaching sixty, white haired, with eyes that dance nervously in the firelight, she listens. She hears the winds weeping and moaning, grim heralds of the bleak winter, but she listens for something else. Suddenly, she hears footsteps, and the sound of a cane tapping on the floor...