at shuts out a chance
of a few last words. No; Greta saw with her eyes and spoke
with her mouth to the last, then folded her hands and died
as handsomely as one would wish to see. She prayed a
trifle, as she should; forgave her brother's wife for
speaking ill of her, and hoped her tongue would not lure
her to destruction. I have heard her brother's wife never
forgave her for it.

"On the last day she sent everybody out of the room save
only Stoffel, and him she held by the hand as he sat beside
the bed. She knew she was drawing to her end (the dying
always know it) and feared nothing. But there was a matter
she wanted to know.

"'Stoffel,' she said when they were alone, won't you tell
me now who that woman is?'

"'What woman?' said Stoffel amazed, for of his dream in his
sickness he had spoken to no living soul.

"She stroked his hand and shook her head at him. Ah,
Stoffel,' she said, 'it is long since I first made place
for that woman, and if I grudged her you, I never grudged
you her. I was content with what you gave me, Stoffel; I
thought you right, whatever you did, and I go to God still
thinking so. All our life, Stoffel, she prevailed against
me, and I submitted; but now, at this last moment, I want
to have the better of it. Tell me, who was it?'

"And Stoffel, looking on the floor, answered, 'I swear to
you there was no woman.'

"She replied, 'And ere the cock crows thou shall deny me
thrice.' She turned her head and looked at him with a
pitiful drawn smile that would have dragged tears from a
demon. 'Was she dark, Stoffel? I am fair, you know; but my
hair--look at it, Stoffel,--my hair is golden. Did you never
notice it before? She was tall, I suppose? Well, I am
something short, but, Stoffel, I am slender, too. Will you
not so much as tell me her name, Stoffel? It is not as if I
blamed you.'

"A truth, hardly won, is always set on a pile of lies. 'How
do you know there was a woman?' asked Stoffel.

"'How?' she repeated. 'How I know! Stoffel, you never had a
thought I did not know; never a hope but I hoped it for
you, nor a fear but I thought how to safeguard you. I never
lived but in you, Stoffel.

"'Let us speak nothing but the truth now,' she went on.
'You and I have always been beyond the need for lies to one
another, and as I wait here for you to tell me, I have one
hand in yours and the other in Christ's. Let me not think
hardly of her as I go.'

"'You would not curse her?' he said qui