"Pity him who is little!" said the boy as he ventured out in the yard.
And he had a right to say this, for he was blown down twice before he
got to the house: once the wind swept him into a pool, which was so deep
that he came near drowning. But he got there nevertheless.
He clambered up a pair of steps, scrambled over a threshold, and came
into the hallway. The cabin door was closed, but down in one corner a
large piece had been cut away, that the cat might go in and out. It was
no difficulty whatever for the boy to see how things were in the cabin.
He had hardly cast a glance in there before he staggered back and turned
his head away. An old, gray-haired woman lay stretched out on the floor
within. She neither moved nor moaned; and her face shone strangely
white. It was as if an invisible moon had thrown a feeble light over it.
The boy remembered that when his grandfather had died, his face had also
become so strangely white-like. And he understood that the old woman who
lay on the cabin floor must be dead. Death had probably come to her so
suddenly that she didn't even have time to lie down on her bed.
As he thought of being alone with the dead in the middle of the dark
night, he was terribly afraid. He threw himself headlong down the steps,
and rushed back to the cowshed.
When he told the cow what he had seen in the cabin, she stopped eating.
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