Late in the morning she stirred slightly and was aware of herself as the residue of disaster, the leavings of tragedy, the nothing of the evil hereafter. A faint cry for pity hushed itself on her lips. Then she began to chill in the cold and she slowly aroused herself to sit on the side of the bed. Her body was shaking in curious rhythms that built upward toward a climax and subsided only to arise again, a compound rhythm of quivering flesh. She reached for a warm dressing-gown and covered herself in the bed, but the chill persisted. Later the woman who had rented the house came bringing some food. “I thought you might be sick,” she said. “I do believe you got a chill.” She set the tray she had brought on the table and began to build a fire in the grate, talking meanwhile about her morning work, suggesting remedies for the cold she said Theodosia had caught. There had been a tragedy in the town during the night, she said. A man had been killed—Ross. She asked Theodosia if she knew a black man named Ross. He had been killed the night before. When she had told this news Theodosia cried out that she had killed him, and the woman was frightened as she came away from the fireplace and stood over the bed. “You must be real sick,” she said. “Is your throat sore maybe? What hurts you?” “Oh, I killed him,” Theodosia cried out again. She could feel the strange rhythms tearing her body in orderly stabs of pain. “I stabbed his throat with a harness knife. I cut his throat.” “You never did no such thing. You’re clean out of your head. I better send for Dr. Muir.” “I stabbed his throat with a harness knife.” “How do you know it was a harness knife? How comes it you know so much about it?” “I did it,” Theodosia said. She sank back to the bed then. “It’s curious you know how it happened. But it was a black woman, Lethe, stabbed him. Everybody knows it.” “Lethe stabbed Lou, but I killed Ross. I cut his throat open.” “Lethe tells how it happened. She’s in jail now. She’s confessed and there’s no question about who did it. She did it. She went after Lou, seems like, but when Ross defended Lou she killed him. Out at the brick-yard it happened, about midnight they say. Lethe’s in jail now and she’ll maybe go to prison for ten years or so. Ross was her husband, but he went off after Lou, and so the court will likely give her a light sentence, they say. Ten years or fifteen, but that’s not light, goodness knows. Anyway she won’t hang, or is not likely, they say.” “I did it,” Theodosia cried out again, sitting up in bed again. “I’ll go to prison ten years, fifteen maybe. Hang maybe. I don’t want to be hung. But I did it....” The strength of the chill multiplied and the rhythms flowed in a strange complexity, short rhythms fitted into the long flow of the heavier beat. Later the fever came and she was still again. * * * * *