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Stanse mashed the potatoes; Zalia poured a drain of milk over them and hung them over the fire again. "Have you all had your suppers?" she asked. "Yes," said Treze and Barbara and Mite. "I haven't," said Stanse. Zalia turned the steaming potato-mash into an earthen porringer and she and Stanse sat down to it. The others drank a fresh bowl of coffee. They were silent.
She crept into the dark goat-house, put down the pot with the food and started milking. "Betje, Betje, Zeen is so ill; Zeen may be dying, Betje!" She always clacked to her goat like that. Two streams of milk came clattering in turns into the little pail. People came: Treze and Mite's little girl, with a lantern, and Barbara Dekkers, who had also come to have a look.
"It'll be to-night," said Treze. "Where can Virginie be? She'll come too late." "Virginie is better than three doctors or a priest either," thought Mite. "Zalia, I think I'd get out the candle." Zalia went to the chest and got out the candle. "Mother, I'm frightened," whined Fietje. "You mustn't be frightened of dead people, child; you must get used to it." "Have you any holy water, Zalia?"
Then they set to work: Treze filled the little glasses; Barbara hung the water over the fire; and Warten, in his shirt-sleeves, stropped his razor to shave Zeen's beard. "And the children! The children who are not here!" moaned Zalia. "He ought to have seen the children!" "First say the prayers," ordered Virginie.
"He'll soon begin to must," said Barbara. "The weather's warm." "He's very bent: how'll they get him into the coffin?" "Crack his back." Treze looked round for a prayer-book to lay under Zeen's chin and a crucifix and rosary for his hands. Mite took a red handkerchief and bound it round his head to keep his mouth closed. Fietje was still kneeling and saying Our Fathers.
She was given a lump of sugar and sat down by her mother. "Zalia, have you only one lamp?" asked Treze. "That's all, Treze, but I have the candle." "What candle?" "The blessed candle." "We've not come to that yet: it's only that Zeen has to lie in the dark like this and we have to go to and fro with the lamp to look at him." "Zeen would rather lie in the dark."
He'll go off quickly, Barbara, it seems to me." "Not to-night," said Treze. "Warten, go to the loft, take the lamp and sift out a handful of maize; Zeen must have a bran bath at once." Warten went up the stair.
Treze was tired of holding Zeen's hand round the candle: she spilt a few drops of wax on the rail of the bed and stuck the candle on it. Zeen jerked himself up, put his hands under the clothes and fumbled with them; then he lay still. "He's packing up," whispered Barbara. "He's going," one of the others thought.
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