Mr. Bilby bade them save their breath, and, although his face was settling into lines of death and he breathed horribly and with an animal roaring, he still begged, as he had from the first, for a sight of his child Doll. The room was then cleared of the pious exhorters, who returned to the Thumb farm and there prayed and drank rumbullion. Only Mr. Kleaver, Mr. Zelley, and the wife remained. Mr. Zelley commanded Hannah to find the child, and Hannah, frowning, went away, but she came back soon and said she was not about. The truth is the woman had struck and cursed the girl so savagely that now, when she heard her name called, she did not dare to come. The doors of the death-chamber were shut and sealed. Camphor was burned on the hearth; then the wife stood by her husband’s side, and, in the presence of Mr. Zelley and the surgeon, asked him three times and in a loud voice whether or not he believed he died of a curse pronounced upon him by his foster child. Mr. Bilby rallied his wits, and, in spite of the agony of his breathing, he stoutly denied the charge. But some (among them Hannah) believe that he was already dead when he seemed to speak, and that an evil spirit had succoured Doll by leaping into the head of the corpse and thus making answer. For he spoke up in a loud, clear voice, and yet one in no way like his own, and the next moment he was not only dead, but looked as though he had been dead for a half-hour or hour at the least. 5 _Doll forswears the God of our Deliverance and embraces Beelzebub who prepares (for her instruction) a_ PROCESSION. The four days Bilby was dying, Doll spent in the hayloft—night and day. She had over-heard the farm servants talking, and she knew of what she was accused and why it was Hannah would not let her into the house. She remembered that strange time when she had run and run through the house, working, she knew, a spell, or rather feeling a spell work through her, and she was sick to think that perhaps she had some power she did not understand, and had really put a charm upon her dear foster father when she had not intended. Perhaps it was also true that unknown to herself she had bewitched Titus Thumb. None went to her or knew where she lay but the youngest of the indentured servants, a good and gentle lad. This boy brought her food and water. When it was night he went to his poor lodgings in the cow-shed and took a blanket from his bed and gave it to her. From the loft Doll stared down at the house and yard, and could guess, by the close attendance of the surgeon and the clergyman and by the multitudes gathered to pray, how sick he was. Every morning she saw Hannah go early to the dunghill and catch a fowl. This bird Doll knew would be laid for warmth at the sick man’s feet, for under the dark covers the creature lay quietly and gave off a good and healing warmth, yet was no bird imprisoned longer than twenty-four hours lest its heat be translated into the chill of death.