g heifers, tied in a line, were grazing and at times looking
toward the house and lowing. The fowls made a colored patch on the
dung-heap before the stable, scratching, moving about and cackling, while
two roosters crowed continually, digging worms for their hens, whom they
were calling with a loud clucking.

The wooden gate opened and a man entered. He might have been forty years
old, but he looked at least sixty, wrinkled, bent, walking slowly,
impeded by the weight of heavy wooden shoes full of straw. His long arms
hung down on both sides of his body. When he got near the farm a yellow
cur, tied at the foot of an enormous pear tree, beside a barrel which
served as his kennel, began at first to wag his tail and then to bark for
joy. The man cried:

"Down, Finot!"

The dog was quiet.

A peasant woman came out of the house. Her large, flat, bony body was
outlined under a long woollen jacket drawn in at the waist. A gray skirt,
too short, fell to the middle of her legs, which were encased in blue
stockings. She, too, wore wooden shoes, filled with straw. The white cap,
turned yellow, covered a few hairs which were plastered to the scalp, and
her brown, thin, ugly, toothless face had that wild, animal expression
which is often to be found on the faces of the peasants.

The man asked:

"How is he gettin' along?"

The woman answered:

"The priest said it's the end--that he will never live through the
night."

Both of them went into the house.

After passing through the kitchen, they entered a low, dark room, barely
lighted by one window, in front of which a piece of calico was hanging.
The big beams, turned brown with age and smoke, crossed the room from one
side to the other, supporting the thin floor of the garret, where an army
of rats ran about day and night.

The moist, lumpy earthen floor looked greasy, and, at the back of the
room, the bed made an indistinct white spot. A harsh, regular noise, a
difficult, hoarse, wheezing breathing, like the gurgling of water from a
broken pump, came from the darkened couch where an old man, the father of
the peasant woman, was dying.

The man and the woman approached the dying man and looked at him with
calm, resigned eyes.

The son-in-law said:

"I guess it's all up with him this time; he will not last the night."

The woman answered:

"He's been gurglin' like that ever since midday." They were silent. The
father's eyes were closed, his face was the color of