“How they keep time! ’tis amazing,” said Lucio. “Come regular with the first frost and go regular when the catkins peer out on the sallows.” Then silence fell again between them. The fire burnt more silently and more hotly; the woman put her child away from her, and thrust her breast back behind the iron busk of her stays; the twins fell asleep leaning against each other. The boys gambling with the plum-stones swore and struck at each other. From between the rafters overhead the sound of a low groan was heard now and then, and the elder son muttered, with many an oath, “Can’t ye be quiet, old one?” Time went on. They had no watch or clock, but they could tell that an hour had passed by the look of the burning wood. There was a louder sound as of lamentation from the room above. Alcide got up and went to the foot of the wooden stair. “Hold your jaw, old one!” he shouted. “Can’t you die in a quiet way? You’ve lived a deal too long as it is.” One small boy nudged his twin brother. “Grandfather’s dying,” he whispered with glee, and the two little creatures chuckled together. There would be one mouth the less for the polenta, one throat the less for the rare thin wine; the tic-tac of his stick on the stones would no longer come after them when they were truant, the stroke of his crutch would no longer make their shoulder-blades tingle when he caught them stealing, the sound of his voice on the stairs would no longer wake them up out of warm slumber amongst the straw and lumber on black winter mornings when the cows were lowing to be milked. Grandfather had been so long to be feared, it was delightful to them to hear him soundly rated, now that he could not get up and come down with his ash-stick raised. “Grandfather’s dying,” they said to each other for the twentieth time with glee, as the ruddy lights from the blazing billets shone on their little unwashed brown faces. “’Tis time we ate something,” said the woman, and she unhooked the pot hanging on a chain over the fire, and poured the contents out into an earthenware bowl. It was bean-soup, strongly flavoured with lentils and fennel; it was turned into pewter plates and supped up noisily with wooden spoons; pieces of black bread were wrenched off a loaf and eaten with it. They fed as ravenously as pigs, and with less cleanliness. Just as they finished a sound of knocking was heard at the door of the house, which was bolted and barred. “Who’s there?” shouted Alcide. “It is I,” answered a voice with a foreign accent. “’Tis the new steward, perdition seize him!” said Alcide, and he strode across the bricks and drew back the bolts. “What’s amiss that you honour us at this time of night, sir?” he said sullenly to the person who stood on the step holding a horse’s bridle. “There is much amiss here, they say,” replied the new-comer. “Is it true that your father, Adamo, is dying?” “What’s that to anyone?” said Alcide, unwillingly. “Folk usually die when they get nigh ninety.”