“Since that day we are avoided, shunned with horror. None has come near this hut to know whether we live or not. The rest of us were taken down. Then I roused me and got up, as wife and mother will. It was little they could have eaten in any case; it was less than little they had to eat. But there was water, and I gave them that. How they craved it! and how they blessed it! But the end came yesterday; my strength broke down. Yesterday was the last time I ever saw my husband and this youngest child alive. I have lain here all these hours — these ages, ye may say — listening, listening for any sound up there that — ”

She gave a sharp quick glance at her eldest daughter, then cried out, “Oh, my darling!” and feebly gathered the stiffening form to her sheltering arms.

She had recognized the death-rattle.