The day dawned slowly and, as it seemed, with great difficulty. The morning was cold and cloudy as is often the case after a tempestuous night.
There was a great bustling about in the house of mourning. A bier and a coffin had to be made, and the dead clothed in their funeral finery. The old squire wished the funeral to be a splendid one.
The courtyard had been swept clean. Every household tool and implement of labour had been removed out of the way. They were preparing to keep one of those days of sad and solemn observance which must befall every household at some time or other.
At such times the street door is kept wide open. Let the country folks come in and look upon the dead, let them learn from the sight that Death is the judge of the gentry as well as of the serfs; let them see how the rich can be splendid even after death, how they embellish their coffins, how they fasten them with golden nails, how they embroider their palls with patterns of roses and gold filagree, how they spread the bed of death itself with the finest white watered silk and perfume it with the most fragrant balm.
Yet that fragrant balm cannot stifle the smell of the charnel house. Here, too, men must hold their handkerchiefs to their mouths as they do before the corpses of the poor.
For Death is a just judge.
A ragged man passes through the door. He is soaked through and through with mud and dirt, it was clear that no roof had covered his head during last night's tempest. His feet peeped from out of his boots, his damp hair seemed glued to his temples, his eyes were sunken, his cheeks were mere bone, his lips were blue and hollow.
He entered the courtyard falteringly like one who would steal something but does not know how to set about it, and there he stood at the entrance of the hall, leaning against the lintel, with eyes cast down upon the ground.
The dogs approached him, sniffed at his clothes all round, and began to growl at him.
Only one dog, an old boar-hound, would not be satisfied with sniffing impatiently among the others, but rushed upon the stranger, placed its two front paws upon him, licked his limp hand, and began joyously barking at him.