with
fever. I could starve. It wasn't death nor awfulness I couldn't
face,--not that, not _that_; but I loved her true, I say,--I loved her
true, and I'd spoken my last words to her, my very last; I had left her
_those_ to remember, day in and day out, and year upon year, as long as
she remembered her husband, as long as she remembered anything.

I think I must have gone pretty nearly mad with the fever and the
thinking. I fell down there like a log, and lay groaning. "God Almighty!
God Almighty!" over and over, not knowing what it was that I was saying,
till the words strangled in my throat.

Next day, I was too weak so much as to push open the door. I crawled
around the hut on my knees with my hands up over my head, shouting out
as I did before, and fell, a helpless heap, into the corner; after that
I never stirred.

How many days had gone, or how many nights, I had no more notion than
the dead. I knew afterwards; when I knew how they waited and expected
and talked and grew anxious, and sent down home to see if I was there,
and how she--But no matter, no matter about that.

I used to scoop up a little snow when I woke up from the stupors. The
bread was the other side of the fire; I couldn't reach round. Beauty eat
it up one day; I saw her. Then the wood was used up. I clawed out chips
with my nails from the old rotten logs the shanty was made of, and kept
up a little blaze. By and by I couldn't pull any more. Then there were
only some coals,--then a little spark. I blew at that spark a long
while,--I hadn't much breath. One night it went out, and the wind blew
in. One day I opened my eyes, and Bess had fallen down in the corner,
dead and stiff. Beauty had pushed out of the door somehow and gone. I
shut up my eyes. I don't think I cared about seeing Bess,--I can't
remember very well.

Sometimes I thought Nancy was there in the plaid shawl, walking round
the ashes where the spark went out. Then again I thought Mary Ann was
there, and Isaac, and the baby. But they never were. I used to wonder
if I wasn't dead, and hadn't made a mistake about the place that I was
going to.

One day there was a noise. I had heard a great many noises, so I didn't
take much notice. It came up crunching on the snow, and I didn't know
but it was Gabriel or somebody with his chariot. Then I thought more
likely it was a wolf.

Pretty soon I looked up, and the door was open; some men were coming in,
and a woman. She was ahead of them all