Proudly she lived, ruling her household vigorously and strictly, nor did her masterfulness decrease with advancing age.
And what of the end? what of the final scene which closes in and rounds off the longest and most eventful of lives?
To them it came suddenly. Pŭl-Yūn, grey, hale, unbent, had grown somewhat silent, husbanding breath and powers which he had private reasons to suspect were failing, albeit no man of his body-guard had yet seen his doubt reflected in the silent side-glancing face of a fellow.
The summer heats were upon the land, a great drought, the tall and stalwart elder had overtaxed himself in the noon-day sun at a game-driving. When the evening meal was cooked, he did not eat. Dêh-Yān urged uselessly. All that night he was restless, dreaming, speaking in his sleep, but not of enemies, no, for this the keenly-solicitous wife, holding her breath, listened in vain. To whom might she lay this sickness?--a bewitching, obéah-work doubtless, but, for ten days' march in any direction was there a man who dared think in his inmost heart evil of the great chief? No, there was none in all that region that peeped or moved the wing.
Who in her household then? She brooded, vainly pondering. All the next day her man lay silent, refusing the various foods which she prepared with her own hands. At sunset she summoned the clan; her subject wives, their handmaidens, daughters and slaves sate around the silent hut: beyond the royal enclosure in a wider ring squatted the body-guard, his sons and grandsons, and the staunchest of the braves of the tribe, grizzled ring-men upon whose scarred, brown chests shifted and glittered the trophies of forty battles. They squatted mute, hand over mouth, knowing well what was a-doing inside, jealous, remorseful, anxious; someone should die for this!--yes, to the fire with her, though she were the beauty of the tribe, or with him, if he were the best archer of them all!
Dêh-Yān came forth and perambulated the concourse, a V-shaped sprig of the witch-hazel in her hands; seven times she went through them and about them, but the twig turned to none. Rhabdomancy had failed her. Silently she had come, silently she went, still an-hungered for vengeance, and still unsatisfied re-entered the dark hut.