n her mother's room, hard by, and soon fell
asleep.

She had slept about two hours when she was wakened by a strange noise in
the sick-chamber. A man and a woman quarrelling.

She bounded off the bed, and was in the room directly.

Lo and behold, there were the nurse and the dying man abusing one
another like pickpockets.

The cause of this little misunderstanding was not far to seek. The old
crone had brought up her work: _videlicet_, a winding-sheet all but
finished, and certain strips of glazed muslin about three inches deep.
She soon completed the winding-sheet, and hung it over two chairs in the
patient's sight; she then proceeded to double the slips in six, and nick
them; then she unrolled them, and they were frills, and well adapted to
make the coming corpse absurd, and divest it of any little dignity the
King of Terrors might bestow on it.

She was so intent upon her congenial task that she did not observe the
sick man had awakened, and was viewing her and her work with an
intelligent but sinister eye.

"What is that you are making?" said he, grimly.

The voice was rather clear, and strong, and seemed so loud and strange
in that still chamber, that it startled the woman mightily. She uttered
a little shriek, and then was wroth. "Plague take the man!" said she;
"how you scared me. Keep quiet, do; and mind your own business." [The
business of going off the hooks.]

"I ask you what is that you are making," said Griffith, louder, and
raising himself on his arm.

"Baby's frills," replied the woman, coolly, recovering that contempt for
the understandings of the dying which marks the veritable crone.

"Ye lie," said Griffith. "And there is a shroud. Who is that for?"

"Who should it be for, thou simple body? Keep quiet, do, till the change
comes. 'T won't be long now; art too well to last till sundown."

"So 't is for me, is it?" screamed Griffith. "I'll disappoint ye yet.
Give me my clothes. I'll not lie here to be measured for my grave, ye
old witch."

"Here's manners!" cackled the indignant crone. "Ye foul-mouthed knave!
is this how you thank a decent woman for making a comfortable corpse of
ye, you that has no right to die in your shoes, let a be such dainties
as muslin neck-ruff, and shroud of good Dutch flax."

At this Griffith discharged a volley in which "vulture," "hag,"
"blood-sucker," etc., blended with as many oaths: during which Mercy
came in.

She glided to him, with her dove's eyes ful