The elder brother, who had just come in from the fields with his muddy boots on, had sat down close to the door. He moved his chair now nearer the bed.
The sick woman lay for a while in thought, as if weighing the matter in her mind. Then she looked long and earnestly at her two sons.
"You two will have to divide what's left," she said at last. "And I've not said a word of it before; you're not like to quarrel over it, I know. But there's one thing in the place that I want to keep separate from the rest, and give it up to you now, before I go."
She sighed, and was silent for a while, as if needing rest before she could continue. The two young men watched her expectantly.
'"Tis nothing of great value, but it's all tied up like with something that happened once, and all the thoughts of it—and 'tis valuable to me. I mean the cupboard there."
The sons glanced at the thing where it stood; an old cupboard in two sections, that they knew well.
"You look surprised. Oh, if I could only tell you…."
She gazed upwards in silence, as if praying for strength. Then, with a strange light in her eyes, she turned towards them and went on almost in a whisper, as one who tells a tale of ghosts:
"It was long ago. In this very room, on this very bed here lay a woman who had borne a man-child but four days before. She had always been tender and faithful and obedient to her husband, and had tried to do his will in everything. And she had been happy, very happy. But before the child was born, a suspicion had begun to grow up secretly in her mind. And now, on the fifth night, as she lay there with the newborn child, in the pale light from a lamp on the shelf of the cupboard there, the fear at her heart grew all of a sudden so strong that she got up, and went into the next room, to see if what she dreaded was true…."
The sick woman turned her face to the wall, to hide the tears that forced themselves into her eyes.