When they reached the door, the stranger stopped and turned to Tom.
“There is no sound inside,” he faltered; “I dare not go in.”
Tom strode by him and pushed the door open.
In one corner of the room was a roughly made bedstead, and upon it lay a girl, her deathly pale face turned sideways upon the pillow. It was as if she lay prostrated by some wave of agony which had just passed over her; her breath was faint and rapid, and great drops of sweat stood out upon her young drawn face.
Tom drew a chair forward and sat down beside her. He lifted one of her hands, touching it gently, but save for a slight quiver of the eyelids she did not stir. A sense of awe fell upon him.
“It’s Death,” he said to himself. He had experience enough to teach him that. He turned to the man.
“You had better go out of the room; I will do my best.”
In a little over an hour Aunt Mornin dismounted from her mule and tethered it to a sapling at the side of the road below. She looked up at the light gleaming faintly through the pines on the hillside.