For I have heard my grandsire say full often,
Extremity of griefs would make men mad:
And I have read that Hecuba of Troy
Ran mad through sorrow: that made me to fear.
Tit. Andron.--Act. iv.
The knocking grew louder and louder; but the old woman answered not a word; on the contrary she seemed only the more earnestly intent on her spinning. At length a little rustling was heard; by some artifice the door was unbolted from the outside; and somebody stepped in. Even then the old woman did not stir from her seat; and the man who had entered, flinging down a heap of old drift wood, opened the conversation himself:
"What's the matter now, mother, that you keep me so long waiting?"
"Waiting!" retorted the old woman without raising her eyes from her wheel, "you waiting!--Humph! A pretty waiting I should have, if I were to wait on every idle fellow that knocks."
"Aye, mother; but think of the weather and the frost that----"
"The frost? I tell thee what--a bonnier lad than thou, and one that I loved better far, lies frozen in his grave."