The old woman was dead.
The locked front door showed she had shut herself in to die, and
had died alone. How long she had lain there, as if asleep, for so
she appeared, was a matter of conjecture. The thin, gnarled hands,
brown with outdoor labor, were folded on her breast. Her face
showed that calm with which death stamps the faces of long-suffering,
simple-minded peasant folk. The patient resignation through the
long years of toil, through years, perhaps, of pain and suffering,
suffering more likely than not borne in silence, taken as a matter
of course---all seemed to have culminated in the quiet peace on the
seamed dead face.
No wonder the boys involuntarily uncovered and stood for some time
without speaking.
"Somebody's mother," said Dicky at last, with a catch in his throat as
he uttered the words.
"Yes, perhaps," said Bob, as he gently covered the body with a blanket.
"We must bury her decently. Who knows how long she might have lain
here but for our chance coming?"
Under a dust sheet, strung on a bit of string along the side of the
room, the boys found many women's garments, of the cheapest, simplest
sort, and some men's clothing.
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