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 morning and retire into the little back room where the air was already heavy and stale from the breathing of Craw and Elmer.

In spite of the occasional days when she felt better and talked about getting up, Mrs. Pippinger grew steadily worse. There were whole days now when she lay in a semi-stupor only rousing a little to smile feebly if Bill or one of the children came to her bedside. She had grown very thin, and her hands that lay on the quilt were white and transparent.

One day on leaving the doctor took Aunt Abigail aside and said in a low tone: "I'm afraid there's not much hope that she'll live through it. If she's in pain and her breath comes hard, give her one of these."

And he handed Aunt Abigail a little envelope containing small, white pills.

Her stupor increased very noticeably after this and she was hardly ever conscious. The neighbors came in and took turns sitting up with her to relieve Bill and Abigail. They moved her bed into the kitchen for greater warmth and convenience of waiting on her; and there she lay day after day more like a dead woman than a living one.

One very cold day her breathing was loud and sonorous like snoring. It echoed all through the stagnant air of the little house. When the doctor came that afternoon he took Bill and Aunt Abigail aside on the way out.

"It isn't likely she'll live till morning," he said.

Bill did not answer; he went to the barn to do his chores. Aunt Abigail hurried back into the house with the air of one who has work to do.

Aunt Sally Whitmarsh came that night to sit up. She was an elderly woman with crafty eyes and rather handsome regular features that were always set and composed, as though she were sitting in church listening to a sermon. She was not so thin as most of her neighbors and her skin was white and fine and almost free from wrinkles.

Then when the supper table was cleared, the dishes washed and the children in bed, and the watchers were settling down