"Come with me," she said gently. "Come over to the light and let me see what is the matter first." The woman stood there shaking and trembling with fever. She could not lift her feet, but shuffled helplessly, and would have fallen but for Sigrun's aid. Helping her over to the light, she saw that the woman's face was terribly swollen and disfigured. Dark breaking blisters close, close together all over. And the same with her hands. "Lotta!" said Sigrun in a low, trembling voice. "What is it?" But there was no need for Lotta to answer. Sigrun knew as well as she did what the sickness was. She knew, too, that it was risking death to touch the poor vagrant, yet she began resolutely stripping off her clothes, and while Lotta Hedman made the bed ready, spreading clean sheets, cool and smooth for the hot and tender skin. Sigrun gave her clean linen underclothes, and soon they had the groaning, shivering woman stretched on the bed. And there they sat, full of pity for her, while she moaned and writhed in pain. Sigrun tried to give her water, but she seemed unable to swallow. Then the mistress turned again to Lotta, and the two sat hand in hand, silent and horrified at the power of the dreadful disease. Soon they breathed more easily; the sick woman seemed to be quieter now, and suffering less. And a little later, a short hour since she had first entered, she was perfectly calm and motionless. The uneven breathing stopped. The two friends rose, laid the dead woman out where she lay, and crouched together as before, close to each other, as if petrified by the terrible dead face. "A few days, and I shall look like that"--the same thought was in the minds of both. "Look like she does now. No one would recognize me. No one could say who it was." "Who can she be?" asked Lotta in a whisper. And Sigrun answered in the same low voice that it must be some poor vagrant with no home to go to. "Her clothes were not so very bad," she went on. "But sadly worn. Her boots are wet and trodden through; she has tramped a long way through the snow. The sickness must have come upon her on the road, and she has wandered about over the country in delirium. It must have been the light from our lamp that made her come here." Again they sat in silence, watching the dead. And now it was that a dreadful thought came to Sigrun. "If I lay there in her place," she said to herself. "Why not? Why should I not manage it so that it is Sigrun Rhånge who lies there?" It seemed as if Lotta Hedman had read her thought; she turned to Sigrun and stared at her in breathless fear. "No one knows her," said Sigrun. Her voice was no longer low and whispering, but firm and decided. "No one knows where she comes from. No one can have seen her come in here. A poor vagrant without a home." Lotta said nothing. She would not betray her suspicions. If Sigrun were not thinking of that after all, then it would be best to say nothing. Sigrun went on as before: