The Kitchen of the Moorland Farmhouse

The knife was protruding from the woman's stomach when I arrived.
She was still alive and, from the hasty departure that I heard, I
assumed, that her assailant had just left.

It was a scene of utter chaos. Once the room had been part of a proud
moorland home, where children had been raised, songs had been sung and
people had got righteously drunk and maudlin and, above all, they had
lived.

Against the wall was the smoke shadow of a "Welsh dresser", but now it
was in pieces on the floor. The table had been upended and all the
chairs broken.

The woman groaned in agony and she looked at me imploringly. I looked
again at her wound and I saw the pool of blood as it spread across the
stone flags. To remove the knife would do more harm than good, causing
internal damage, which would hasten her death. I knew that she had no
chance of survival. She cried again in agony and this degenerated into
a low sob.

When she died, I reached inside her and put my hand in my pocket, while
I pulled up my hood, collected my scythe and left.