Nothing of this no more than of anything else that happened to her, or anything that she thought of, did Sheen tell the Spae-Woman. But she wished and she wished that the Hunter-King might come past while there was a light in the house and step within and talk to the Spae-Woman, so that she herself, while spinning the thread, could hear his voice and listen to the things he talked about. She often stood at the door and watched across the bog to see if anything was coming to her.
A neighbor-woman came across the door-step one evening and Sheen went into the house after her, for she felt that something was going to be told. There was a dead man in a house. He had been found in the wood. He was known as the Hunter-King. Sheen stood at her bed and heard what the neighbor-woman said.
The Hunter-King was being waked in the neighbor-woman’s house, and her eldest daughter had been the corpse-watcher the first night. In the morning they found that the girl’s hand had been withered. The woman’s second daughter was the corpse-watcher the second night and her right hand had been left trembling. This was the third and last night that the Hunter-King would be waked, and to-night there was no one to watch his corpse.
Sheen thought that nothing would ever happen in the world again, now that the Hunter-King was dead. She thought that there was no loneliness so great as that of his corpse with no one to watch it on the last strange night it would be above ground. The neighbor-woman went from the Spae-Woman and Sheen went after her. She was standing on the door-step of her house. “Oh, colleen,” said the neighbor-woman, “I am wanting a girl to watch a corpse in my house to-night--the third and the last night for watching. Will you watch and I will give you a comb for your hair?” Sheen showed that she would serve the woman and she went into the wake-house. At first she was afraid to look at the bed. Then she went over and saw the Hunter-King with his face still, his eyes closed down, and the plate of salt on his breast. His gray gaunt hound was stretched across his feet.
The woman and her daughters lighted candles and placed them in the window recesses and at the head of the corpse. Then they went into their dormer-room and left Sheen to her watching. She sat at the fire and made one fagot after another blaze up. She had brought her basket of bog-down and she began to spin a thread upon the neighbor-woman’s wheel.