Her mother worked about the house; Lois could hear her now and then, and every time she shuddered.

She had a feeling that the woman in the house was not her mother.

Had she been familiar with the vampire superstition, she might have thought of that, and had a fancy that some fiend animated the sober, rigid body of the old New England woman with evil and abnormal life.
At noon Lois went in and ate some dinner mechanically; then she returned.

Presently, as she sat there, a bell began tolling, and a funeral procession passed along the road below.

Lois watched it listlessly--the black-draped hearse, the slow-marching bearers, the close-covered wagons, and the nodding horses.