But there was nothing. No, the maid’s soft skin was all unbroken, the slender bones whole, and there was nothing to be seen. She was pale and piteously thin, but she was thin always and death is pale. Then did the mother stoop and smell at the child’s lips to see if there was any smell of poison, but there was no smell, nothing now except the faint sad scent of death. Yet somehow the mother could not believe that this was any good and usual death. She turned on those who stood about the door watching her in silence, and she looked at them and saw their wild rude faces, not one of which she knew, and she shouted at them through sudden great weeping, “You have killed her--well I know you have--if you did not, then tell me how did my maid die so soon, and she left me sound and well!” Then the evil old man whom she had hated from the first time she saw him grinned and said, “Be careful how you speak, goodwife! It is not a small thing to say we killed her and--” But the sullen, rough-haired woman broke in screaming, “How did she die? She died of a cold she caught, being so puny, and that is how she died!” And she spat upon the ground and said again, screeching as she said, “A useless maid she was, too, if there was one, and knowing nothing--no, she could not even learn to fetch the water from the spring and not stumble and fall or lose her way!” Then the mother looked and saw a narrow stony path leading down the mountain to a small pool and she groaned and cried, “Is that the way you mean?” But no one answered her and she cried out in further agony, “You beat her--doubtless every day my maid was beaten!” But the woman answered quickly, “Search and see if there be bruises on her! Once my son did beat her for she came to him too slowly, but that is all!” The mother looked up then and said faintly, “Where is your son?” And they pushed him forward, that son they had, and there he stood, a gangling, staring lad, and the mother saw he was nearly witless. Then did the mother lay her head down upon her dead maid and weep and weep most wildly, and more wildly still she wept when she thought of what the maid had suffered, must have suffered, at such hands as these. And while she wept the anger grew about her in those who watched her. At last she felt a touch upon her and looking up she saw it was her son, and he bent and whispered to her urgently, “Mother, we are in danger here--I am afraid--we must not stay. Mother, she is dead now and what more can you do? But they look so evil I do not know what they will do to us. Come and let us hasten to the village and buy a little food and then press on home tonight!” The mother rose then unwillingly, but as she looked she saw it was true those people stood together close, and there was that about them to make her fear, too, and she did not like their muttering nor the looks they cast at her and at the youth. Yes, she must think of him. Let them kill her if they would, but there was her son.