All this the little maid Abigail Proctor saw through her half-delirious fancy as she lay weakly on the keeping-room floor, but she saw not the reality of her sister Sarah coming about four o’clock in the afternoon. Sarah Proctor, tall and slender, in her limp bedraggled dress, with her fair severe face set in a circle of red shawl, which she had pinned under her chin, came resolutely down the road from Boston, driving a black cow before her with a great green branch. She was nearly fainting with weariness, but she set her dusty shoes down swiftly among the road weeds, and her face was as unyielding as an Indian’s. When she came in sight of the Proctor house she stopped a second. “Abigail!” she called; “Abigail!” There was no answer, and she went on more swiftly than before. When she reached the house she called again, “Abigail!” but did not wait except while she tied the black cow, by a rope which was around her neck, to a peach-tree. Then she ran in, and found the little maid, her sister Abigail, on the floor in the keeping-room. She got down on her knees beside her, and Abigail smiled up in her face waveringly. She still thought herself in the door, and that she had just seen her sister come down the road. “Abigail, what have they done to you?” asked Sarah, in a sharp voice; and the little maid only smiled. “Abigail, Abigail, what is it?” Sarah took hold of the child’s shoulders and shook her; but she got no word back, only the smile ceased, and the eyelids drooped faintly. “Are you hungry, Abigail?” The little maid shook her head softly. “It cannot be that,” said Sarah, as if half to herself; “there was enough in the house; but what is it? Abigail, look at me; how long is it since you have eaten? Abigail!” “Yesterday,” whispered the little maid, dreamily. “What did you eat then?” “Some posies and leaves out in the field.” “What became of all the bread that was baked, and the cakes, and the meat?” “I--have forgot.” “No, you have not. Tell me, Abigail.” “The black beast came in the night and did eat it all up, and the cow, and calf, and the horses, too.” “The black beast!” “I heard him in the night, and in the morning ’twas--gone.” Sarah sprang up. “Robbers and murderers!” she cried, in a fierce voice; but the little maid on the floor did not start; she shut her eyes again, and looked up and down the road. Sarah got a bucket quickly, and went out in the yard to the cow. Down on her knees in the grass she went and milked; then she carried in the bucket, strained the milk with trembling haste, and poured some into Abigail’s little pewter porringer. “She was wont to love it warm,” she whispered, with white lips. She bent close over the little maid, and raised her on one arm, while she put the porringer to her mouth. “Drink, Abigail,” she said, with tender command. “’Tis warm--the way you love it.”