The old bitch, Old Mam, had littered in a bedroom at the end of the upper hallway, three weak puppies in a writhing heap on a bed of rags. They would die of the cold. It would be cold above-stairs, she reflected, her fire untended, the sour odor of cold cleaving the air, rising from the window ledges and gathering at last to the bed. It would be cold beyond the walls of the house, beyond the reach of her fire; all night the air would grow more and more dense with cold. The pond down by the creek would be frozen, a thick sheet of ice to be broken in the morning by some axe. To lie all night on the ground ten feet from the place where she sat would be death to life, the end of all vigor. She would lie on the frozen grass, willing, she predicted, and the wind would search out her thin dress, her thin blood. Determination would hold her there. Pain would wrap around her, fixed into her limbs and her body and her brain, and finally she would become drowsed. All would recede, the all meaning her memory of life. “Was it for this?” something would ask, saying, “You were saved at birth by care, some care, and were taught, praised, kept—a curious thing—for this.” A black irony. Drowsiness would settle nearer. It was for this. Morning would come and she would lie still, frozen, ten feet from the spot in which she now sat, her hands bent, her body stiff, the waters of her flesh congealed, ice in her mouth. She moved nearer to the fire with a sharp cry and held her hands to the flame, leaning her body nearer. She looked at her hands as she rubbed them well into the warmth of the fire’s radiance, her thin narrow hands moving with life, blood in their channels, and she loved her hands. Frank was coming in at the hallway, closing the front door, whistling. In the next instant came a great clutter of leaping feet, confused thought, cries, growls, oaths, blows. A rush of animal feet on the stairway and more outcries. She went to the door of the parlor and opened it wide, and Frank was there trying to defend himself from two dogs, another dog coming down the stair. He was kicking at the beast that was at his feet, but another was at his breast, leaping. She drove the dog, Old Mam, from his breast, ordered her back with a sharp command. There were four dogs now in the dim hallway, one coming from the region beyond the stair. “This house, it’s full of devils,” Frank cried out. He was drawing back toward the door. “This whole damn place is a den of demons. For God’s sake keep that dog off me!” The dogs went away sullenly, Old Mam above to her whelps, Tilly to lie at Miss Doe’s door until it opened for her tapping.