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“Matildy Bent, take that back! Take it back, for mercy sake! Don’t you dare die thinkin’ that–don’t you dare!”

Bent, hearing her voice rising, came to the door, and the wife, recognizing his step, cried out:

“Don’t let him in! Don’t! I can’t bear him–keep him out; I don’t want to see him ag’in.”

“Who do you mean? Not Joe?”

“Yes! Him!”

Had the dying woman confessed to murder, good Martha could not have been more shocked. She could not understand this terrible revulsion in feeling, for she herself had been absolutely loyal to her husband through all the trials which had come upon them.

But she met Bent at the threshold, and, closing the door, went out with him into the summer kitchen, where the rest of the family were sitting. A gloomy silence fell on them all after the greetings were over. The men were smoking; all were seated in chairs tipped back against the wall. Joe Bent, a smallish man, with a weak, good-natured face, asked, in a hoarse whisper:

“How is she, Mis’ Ridings?”

“She seems quite strong, Mr. Bent. I think you had all better go to bed; if I want you, I can call you. Doctor give me directions.”

“All right,” responded the relieved man. “I’ll sleep on the lounge in the other room. If you want me, just rap on the door.”

When, after making other arrangements, Martha went back to the bedroom, she was startled to hear the sick woman muttering to herself, or perhaps because she had forgotten Martha’s absence.

“But the shadows on the meadow didn’t stay; they passed on, and then the sun was all the brighter on the flowers. We used to string sweet-williams on spears of grass–don’t you remember?”

Martha gave her a drink of the opiate in the glass, adjusted her on the pillow, and threw open the window, even to the point of removing the screen, and the gibbous moon flooded the room with light. She did not light a lamp, for its flame would heat the room. Besides, the moonlight was sufficient. It fell on the face of the sick woman till she looked like a thing of marble–all but her dark eyes.

“Does the moon hurt you, Tilly? Shall I put down the curtain?”

The woman heard with difficulty, and when the question was repeated, said slowly:

“No, I like it.” After a little: “Don’t you remember, Mattie, how beautiful the moonlight seemed? It seemed to promise happiness–and love–but it never come for us. It makes me dream of the past now–just as it did of the future then; an’ the whip-poor-wills, too–“

The night was perfectly beautiful, such a night as makes dying an infinite sorrow. The summer was at its liberalest. Innumerable insects of the nocturnal sort were singing in unison with the frogs in the pools. A whip-poor-will called, and its neighbor answered like an echo. The leaves of the trees, glossy from the late rain, moved musically to the light west wind, and the exquisite perfume of many flowers came in on the breeze.

When the failing woman sank into silence, Martha leaned her elbow on the window-sill, and, gazing far into the great deeps of space, gave herself up to unwonted musings upon the problems of human life. She sighed deeply at times. She found herself at moments in the almost terrifying position of a human soul in space. Not a wife, not a mother, but just a soul facing the questions which harass philosophers. As she realized her condition of mind she apprehended something of the thinking of the woman on the bed. Matilda had gone beyond–or far back–of the wife and mother.

The hours wore on; the dying woman stirred uneasily now and then, whispering a word or phrase which related to her girlhood–never to her later life. Once she said:

“Mother, hold me. I’m so tired.”

Martha took the thin form in her arms, and, laying her head close beside the sunken cheek, sang, in half breath, a lullaby till the sufferer grew quiet again.

The lustrous moon passed over the house, leaving the room dark, and still the patient watcher sat beside the bed, listening to the slow breathing of the dying one. The cool air grew almost chill; the east began to lighten, and with the coming light the tide of life sank in the dying body. The head, hitherto restlessly turning, ceased to move. The eyes grew quiet and began to soften like a sleeper’s.

“How are you now, dear?” asked the watcher several times, bending over the bed, and bathing back the straying hair.

“I’m tired–tired, mother–turn me,” she murmured drowsily, with heavy lids drooping.

Martha patted the pillows once again, and turned her friend’s face to the wall. The poor, tortured, restless brain slowly stopped its grinding whirl, and the thin limbs, heavy with years of hopeless toil, straightened out in an endless sleep.

Matilda Fletcher had found rest.