During the last few weeks, while he was working himself deeper and deeper into the rotting heart of the plague, he caught the flitting of another, on ahead of him, who was giving of strength and spirit, and who was followed by blessings. Then the name came to him, back along the way she had gone, and a comfort had soothed him, an exaltation had stirred his heart. Then one night they met in a place of death, and he had marveled at the courage in her face, the readiness of her hands. A second time he met her, again in the night, and heard her plead with the brutal drivers of the death-carts for reverence for the dead; once in the potter's-field he had taken the spade from her hands, and finished the shallow grave she had been digging for a dead child. And now, as he stood talking with her in the pest-house, there arose a voice. "In the garret, my dear sons," it said. "I must lie in the garret; that is the place I like best." A bent, withered old woman, whom Anthony had noted prowling among the sick, muttering and chuckling, paused beside the man's bed; her long, discolored teeth showed in a kind of horrid glee as she looked down at him. "So you'd like the garret, would you, my gentleman?" she said. "The garret of that little place which you have kept so close all these years? So would I. I'd like to lie there, too. God's truth, I would. It'd be a rare place to ransack; I'd love, sir, to go about in it." The man tried to arise; but he could not. "Where is Rehoboam? Where is Nathaniel?" he asked. "Where are my sons?" The old woman cackled. "Now, there are the shrewd ones for you," she said. "There is the careful pair. Down at the door, outside, they put you; and away with them, as hard as they could pelt!" The old man closed his eyes and began to mutter. "It is nothing, my sons. Nothing at all. Have I not had pains in the head before? The plague will not enter my house. No, no! There is no gorging and stuffing and high living here. And so there is nothing to attract it." "Gorging and stuffing," said the hag, her yellow teeth showing all the more. "Not enough food has gone into that house in a year to keep a pigeon fat a fortnight." "The garret is high," said the old man. "It's well out of reach, and airy, and cool. From there I can watch the wind blow the smoke from the chimneys, and see the weather-vanes turn, and the flags fly from the mast tops. So put me in the garret, Nathaniel. And draw the cupboard near to my bed." "Ha, ha!" said the old woman. "The cupboard!" "And the chest, Rehoboam; place the chest where I can reach it. Beside my bed. And then I will sleep; and to-morrow I will be well." "To-morrow," said the old woman, "you'll be with the worms. And you'll give them no joy, either; for there'll be spare picking, indeed, on the like of you." "Who is this?" asked Anthony, as he moved toward the bed. "This, sir," said the hag, "is old Bulfinch. He's a usurer by trade, and now lies here rotting of the fever."