“How can I? I am good for nothing, not even to follow the geese—I am very weak, expecting my end day by day. It would truly be more pleasant to die amongst one’s own kinsfolk: much more. Yea, even in the stall where the heifer has been.—And I have forty _zloty_ ready for my burial: perhaps ’twould also suffice for a Mass ... as befits a farmer’s kinswoman!... I should leave my feather-bed to you.... Fear ye not: I should fall asleep quietly amongst you, and sooner than ye expect; very soon....” she faltered anxiously, waiting with a throbbing heart for him to say: “Stay with us!” He did not, but made as if he had not followed the drift of her rambling talk; and stretched himself, and yawned, and walked uneasily about before the hut, the barn, the hayrick.... She sobbed and moaned plaintively. “How could he, indeed? He, a husbandman of such repute—and I, a wretched beggar-woman!” And thereupon she started on her daily search for some place in the village where she could die in good odour, as a respectable peasant-woman. On and on she crawled to find some such nook, and ever drifting about like gossamer in the gale, to stick fast no one knows where. People joked about her, and enjoyed saying that she ought to stay with her family, and telling the Klembas, with mock friendship: “Why, she is of your family, and she has money for her funeral besides, and then she will not trouble you very long. Where else should she be but with you?” Dame Klemba thought of those words, when her goodman told her at night of what Agata had said that day. They were in bed at the time, their children had begun to snore, and she whispered to persuade him: “There will be room for her.... She may lie in the hay.... Or we shall drive the geese out into the shed.—For her food, she wants next to naught.... And she cannot drag on very long.... Moreover, she will be buried at her own cost.—So people will not speak against us.... And then, the feather-bed would be ours: we could not easily get such another one.” This she pointed out to him very eagerly. In answer, Klemba merely snored at the time; but in the morning he said: “If Agata were quite destitute, I should take her in; it were then God’s will, and I could not do otherwise. But, as things stand, they will say we have taken her in for the sake of what she leaves us. As it is, they blame us for having let her go and beg.—Nay, it cannot be.” Klembova obeyed her husband in all things, but she sighed bitterly over the feather-bed lost to them, and got up to hurry the girls out to their work; for that day they had to plant the cabbages.