s ready to impart or to put into
action dropped away into nothingness before that wan, muttering,
unheeding presence. Above all, the coveted window corner, that was to be
a dainty, cheerful oasis in the gaunt old kitchen, stood now choked and
lumbered with a litter of odds and ends that Emma, for all her nominal
authority, would not have dared or cared to displace; over them seemed to
be spun the protection of something that was like a human cobweb.
Decidedly Martha was in the way. It would have been an unworthy meanness
to have wished to see the span of that brave old life shortened by a few
paltry months, but as the days sped by Emma was conscious that the wish
was there, disowned though it might be, lurking at the back of her mind.

She felt the meanness of the wish come over her with a qualm of
self-reproach one day when she came into the kitchen and found an
unaccustomed state of things in that usually busy quarter. Old Martha
was not working. A basket of corn was on the floor by her side, and out
in the yard the poultry were beginning to clamour a protest of overdue
feeding-time. But Martha sat huddled in a shrunken bunch on the window
seat, looking out with her dim old eyes as though she saw something
stranger than the autumn landscape.

"Is anything the matter, Martha?" asked the young woman.

"'Tis death, 'tis death a-coming," answered the quavering voice; "I knew
'twere coming. I knew it. 'Tweren't for nothing that old Shep's been
howling all morning. An' last night I heard the screech-owl give the
death-cry, and there were something white as run across the yard
yesterday; 'tweren't a cat nor a stoat, 'twere something. The fowls knew
'twere something; they all drew off to one side. Ay, there's been
warnings. I knew it were a-coming."

The young woman's eyes clouded with pity. The old thing sitting there so
white and shrunken had once been a merry, noisy child, playing about in
lanes and hay-lofts and farmhouse garrets; that had been eighty odd years
ago, and now she was just a frail old body cowering under the approaching
chill of the death that was coming at last to take her. It was not
probable that much could be done for her, but Emma hastened away to get
assistance and counsel. Her husband, she knew, was down at a
tree-felling some little distance off, but she might find some other
intelligent soul who knew the old woman better than she did. The farm,
she soon found out, had that faculty