Among old Sicilian rules was one which enjoined, after three days’ illness, the Viaticum. This is eloquent enough of the rapidity with which Death snatched his victims when once he had laid his hand on their heads. The most common prognostications of death are: the midnight howling of a dog; the hooting of an owl; the crowing of a hen at midnight; to dream of dead friends or kinsfolk; to sweep the house at night; or to make a new opening of any kind in an inhabited house. Boys are of evil omen when they accompany the Viaticum, but as they always do accompany it, it would seem as if no one who has once received the Last Sacraments has a chance of recovery. He has not much; but it does at times happen that he breaks the bonds of death already woven round him and comes out with renewed life and vigor. Death is expected at midnight or at the first hours of the morning or at mid-day. If delayed, something supernatural is suspected. Had the dying man when in health burnt the yoke of a plough? Is there an unwashed linen-thread in his mattress? Perhaps he once, like care, killed a cat. If he delays his dying, the friends must call out his name in seven Litanies, or at least put his clothes out of doors. In any case he dies because the doctor has misunderstood his case and given him a wrong medicine; else Saints Cosmo and Damian, Saints Francisco and Paolo, would have saved him. When he dies the women raise the death-howl and let loose their hair about their shoulders. All his good qualities are enumerated and his bad ones are forgotten. He is dressed in white, and after he is dressed his shroud is sewn tight. This pious work gains indulgences for those who perform it; and the very needle is preserved as a sacred possession. Sometimes, however, it is left in the grave-clothes to be buried with the corpse. In certain places the women are buried in their wedding-dress, which they have kept all these years to serve as their shroud. Seated or in bed the corpse is always laid out feet foremost to the door, and for this reason no one in Sicily makes a bed with the head to the window and the feet to the door. It would be a bad omen. About the corpse-bed stand lighted candles, or, however poor the family, at least one little oil lamp. The hired mourners, “repulatrici,” were once so numerous and costly as to demand legislative interference and municipal regulation. To this day they tear their hair and throw it in handfuls on the corpse; and the sisters who lament their brothers—rustic Antigones and Electras—exhale their sorrows in sweet and mournful songs.