The good woman might have intended to say more, but she broke off suddenly, and the words died on her lips. The candle she held was darkened, and she saw that the wick was broadening at the top like a tiny mushroom, forming that weird thing called a "corpse-light" in the midst of the blaze.
"What is the matter? What are you afraid of?" said the farmer, wondering at the paleness in his wife's face.
"Look," she said, pointing to the heavy wick. "It seems to have come all of a sudden."
"Only that?" said the old man, scornfully, snuffing out the corpse-light with his thumb and finger.
A shudder passed over the woman as those horny fingers closed on the corpse-light and flung it smoking into the ashes.
The old man had no sympathy with superstitions, and spoke to his wife more sharply than was kind, after the double fright that had shaken her nerves. Perhaps this thought came over him, for he patted her arm with his rough hand, awkwardly enough, not being given to much display of affection, and told her that she had for once got her own way, and mustn't be frightened out of what sleep was left for them between that and daylight by a smudge of soot in the candle.
"You can't expect candles to burn after midnight without crumpling up their wicks," he said, philosophically: "so come to bed. The lad is sound asleep by this time, I dare say."
These kind arguments did not have the desired effect, for the mother's eyes were full of tears, and her hand quivered under the weight of the candlestick, spite of all her efforts to conceal it from the observation of her husband.
In less than ten minutes the farmer was asleep, but his wife, being of a finer and more sensitive nature, could not rest. Like most countrywomen of her class, she mingled some degree of superstition even with her most religious thoughts. Notwithstanding her terror occasioned by the snarling dog, she might have slept well, for the scene that had threatened to end in rageful assault had subsided in unexpected concession; but the funereal blackness in that candle coming so close upon her fright completely unnerved her. Certain it is no sleep came to those weary eyes. Close them as she would, that unseemly light glared upon them, and to her weird imagination seemed to point out some danger for her son.
At last the poor woman was seized with a desperate yearning of motherhood, which had often led her to her son's room when the helplessness of infancy or the perils of sickness appealed to her—a yearning that drew her softly from her bed. Folding a shawl over her night dress, she mounted the stairs and entered the chamber where the young man lay in slumber so profound that he was quite unconscious of her presence; for neither conscience nor tenderness ever took growth enough in his nature to disturb an animal want of any kind. But the light of a waning moon lay upon his face, so the woman fell upon her knees, and gazing on those features, which might not have seemed in any degree perfect to another, soothed herself into prayer, and, out of the tranquillity that brings, into the sleep her nature craved so much.