Billy. She was too terrified to add her weeping to the wail of
the wind--it would have been too ghastly. Would she never find a
match! As she lit the lamp, like the stab of a needle in the
midst of agony, came the thought of how long it had been after
Martin had put in his electrical system and connected up his
barns before she had been permitted to have this convenience in
the house. What would he think now? She wished he were home.
Anyone would be better than this awful waiting alone. She could
only stand there, away from the window, looking out at the sheets
of water running down the panes and shivering with the
frightfulness and savageness of it all.

Her ears caught a rumble, fainter than thunder, and the splash of
horses' hoofs--"it's too muddy for the motor ambulance," she
thought, mechanically. "They're using the old one," and her heart
contracting, twisting, a queer dryness in her throat, she opened
the door as they stopped, her hand shading the lamp against the
sudden inrush of wind and rain. "In there, through the parlor,"
she said dully, indicating the new room and thinking, bitterly,
as she followed them, that now, when it could mean nothing to
Billy, Martin would offer no objections to its being given over
to him.

The scuffling of feet, the low, matter-of-fact orders of a
directing voice: "Easy now, boys--all together, lift. Watch out;
pull that sheet back up over him," and a brawny, work-stooped man
saying to her awkwardly: "I wouldn't look at him if I was you,
Mrs. Wade, till the undertaker fixes him up," and she was once
more alone.