Now out of that storm and chill came down from heaven suddenly, at last, the old woman’s death. She had sat asleep too long, her old body naked for the wind to blow upon when the sun went down, and when the mother came home at twilight, silent, and as if she came from the field and honest labor, she found the old woman in her bed and cold with sudden chills and aches and she cried out, “Some wicked spirit has caught me, daughter! Some ill wind fell on me!” And she moaned and put out her little shriveled hand and the mother took it and it was dry and burning hot. Almost was the mother glad to have it so. Almost did she rejoice there was this thing to take her mind from her own heart and from the sweet and evil thing that she had done that day. She murmured, “It was an ill black sky--very nearly I came home to see if you sat under such a sullen sky, but I thought you would see its hue and come in from under it.” “I slept, though,” the old woman wailed, “I slept, and I slept on and we all slept, and when I woke the sun was gone and I was cold as death.” Then the mother hastened and made hot water for the old woman and put some ginger in it and hot herbs and the old woman drank it. Yet in the night her dry fever grew and she complained she could not breathe because some imp sat on her chest and drove his knife into her lungs, and after a while she ceased talking and lay breathing roughly from her pressed lungs. And the mother was glad she must not sleep. Through the night she was glad she must sit beside the old woman’s bed and watch her and give her water when she moaned for it and put the quilt about her when she pushed it off and cried that she burned and yet shivered too. Outside the night had grown black and mighty rains poured down upon the thatched roof and here and there it broke through and leaked, so that the mother must drag the old woman’s bed out from its corner where the rain seeped in, and over the bed where the children slept she laid a reed mat to hold the leaks off. Yet all these things she was glad to have to do and glad to be so busy all night long. When the morning came the old soul was worse. Yes, any eye could see it, and the mother sent the lad for the cousin and he came and the cousin’s wife came and this neighbor and that and they all looked at the old woman who lay now only partly knowing what was about her, and partly dazed with her fever and the pain she had when she breathed. Each one cried out what must be done and what remedy could be tried, and the mother hastened here and there to try them all in turn. Once the old woman came to herself and seeing the crowd gathered there, she panted from her laden breast, “There is an imp sits here on me and holds me down.... My hour--my hour--”