"Well, things went on like that for quite a while, and finally, one day in February, through all the snow that it made on the ground then, that poor Noémi marched on her feet from Pig Cove to her mother-in-law's, having left her two infants at a neighbor's; for she had resolved herself to ask for some help, seeing that she had had nothing but a little bite since three days. And when they saw her coming they were taken with a fright, and at first they were not going to let her in; but that old snake of a mother, she said:
"'If we refuse to let her in, my children, she will go and suspect something.'
"So they let her in, and when she was in, they let her make all her story, or as much as she had breath for, and then:
"'I am sorry,' said this old snake of a mother, 'that we cannot possibly do anything for you. Alas, my dear little daughter, it is barely even if we can manage to hold soul and body together ourselves, with the terrible winter it makes these days.'
"And just as she said that, what do you think happened? A chair got on one leg and went rap—rap, rap—against the floor.
"That Noémi would often be telling about it afterwards to my stepmother, and she said never of her life had she seen anything so terrifying. But she did not scream or do anything like that, because something, she said, inside her seemed to bid her keep quiet just then. And she used to tell how that old Bucheron woman's face turned exactly the color of an oyster on a white plate, and a trembling took her, and finally she said, scarcely able to make the sound of the words:
"'Though perhaps—I might find—a crust of bread somewhere that—that we could spare.'
"That was how she spoke, and at the same instant, rap went the chair, still on its one leg; and there was a sound of a hammering on the roof.
"'Or perhaps—a little loaf of bread and some potatoes,' said that old Bucheron, while the other Bucherons sat there without one word, in their chairs, as if paralyzed, except that their hands kept up a little shaking motion all the time, like this scour-grass you get in the marsh, which trembles always even if there is not any wind. 'Or perhaps a loaf of bread and some potatoes'—that is what she was saying, when listen, there is a knock as of the hand of corpse just inside the cupboard; and suddenly the two doors fly open—you would have said pushed from the inside!