"If I had kept a hawk for myself too," she muttered, "it would soon
follow the other one in the corner! If only Ani keeps his word, and has
me embalmed!

"But how can he when he too is so near his end. They will let me rot and
disappear, and there will be no future for me, no meeting with Assa."

The old woman remained silent for a long time; at last she murmured
hoarsely with her eyes fixed on the ground:

"Death brings release, if only from the torment of remembrance. But
there is a life beyond the grave. I do not, I will not cease to hope.
The dead shall all be equally judged, and subject to the inscrutable
decrees.--Where shall I find him? Among the blest, or among the damned?
And I? It matters not! The deeper the abyss into which they fling me
the better. Can Assa, if he is among the blest, remain in bliss, when he
sees to what he has brought me? Oh! they must embalm me--I cannot bear
to vanish, and rot and evaporate into nothingness!"

While she was still speaking, the dwarf Nemu had come into the tent;
Scherau, seeing the old woman senseless, had run to tell him that his
mother was lying on the earth with her eyes shut, and was dying. The
witch perceived the little man.

"It is well," she said, "that you have come; I shall be dead before
sunrise."

"Mother!" cried the dwarf horrified, "you shall live, and live better
than you have done till now! Great things are happening, and for us!"