"The very first evening," said she. "I thought it would be so! If you were my son, you should be put into the bag presently."
"Into it he shall go, sure enough!" said Death. He was a stalwart man with a scythe in his hand, and large black wings. "In his coffin shall he be laid, but not yet. I'll only mark him now, and allow him to wander about the world yet awhile, to expiate his sins and to grow better. But I shall come at last. When he least expects it, I shall put him into the black bag, place it on my head, and fly up to the stars. There, too, blooms a lovely garden, and if he be good and pious, he will be allowed to enter it; but should his thoughts be wicked, and his heart still full of sin, then will he sink in his coffin yet lower than he saw the Garden of the World sink down; and it will be only once in every thousand years that I shall go and fetch him, when he will either be condemned to sink still deeper, or be borne aloft to the beaming stars above."
Archaic and inconsistent spelling and punctuation retained.
