starved to death, she could not well have helped it. Therefore, what she herself now did could not be called bad either. Since this, too, must be done or she would starve, it could not well be helped, and she thought this woman, who well knew her dilemma, would surely forgive her for what she did. Thus, by the large, ran the old hag’s explanation.
The lackey sheathed his sword and, with his left hand on the hilt, listened in cold blood to her recital. Of course, his right hand was busy fingering the festering carbuncle on his fiery cheek. But as he listened, a certain courage was born within him. It was the courage he had lacked under the gate a while before. And, moreover, it was a courage tending to move in just the opposite direction from the courage with which he had a little before mounted up into the gate and seized the old woman. It was not only that he was no longer at a loss whether to starve or turn thief. His emotions were now such that the idea of starving to death had been driven from his consciousness as well-nigh unthinkable.