“Don’t be so harsh,” begged Olga, her voice the wraith of a whisper. “You will frighten her to death!”
Goaded to desperation, he raised his fist, and gave the door a terrific blow. It fell with a soft thud, the rotted wood crumbling on the floor. He stepped in, the rest following.
A thick carpet of dust lay over the floor. No imprint upon it, except some tracks left by wandering rats. A stove, red with rust and warped beyond recognition, stood on one side, supporting an old country metal coffeepot, filmed with black. Cobwebs hung from the rude rafters overhead. The round home-made rugs, once brave with gay colours, looked like little mounds of earth. Beside the broken window stood a sagging spinning wheel, so long unused that it drooped in utter dejection, one spindle fallen down.
At first bewildered, utterly struck dumb, then filled with horror too deep for words, the people looked around the room, its silent pathos striking like icy hands across their consciousness.
“She has not—lived here!” Kaisa found her voice first. She stooped and picked up a rusty pan lying beside the stove, and hung it on a bent nail, as though in this small act she found consolation.
“What—what is that—over there?” She pointed to a curtain drawn over an object on one side.
There was a gasp. “Maybe—maybe she is—dead—behind——”
“Dead! You fools!” shrieked Black Eric. “Didn’t we just see her?” He staggered to the curtain, grasped it roughly. It fell, a crumpled mass of dust and decayed cloth, disclosing the two built-in bunks, now empty, where Mary and her daughter had slept.
“There, you see! She must be living in the outhouse, the barn. She—she kept the cow there. Let’s look for her there.” And he passed over what had been the door, the rest following.
“The grave!” cried the old man. “I remember where it was. Let us look for the grave!”