I.

Although we had been one man short all day, and there was a plain

threat of rain in the hot air, everybody left the hay-field long before

sundown. It was too much to ask of human nature to stay off up in the

remote meadows, when such remarkable things were happening down around

the house.

Marcellus Jones and I were in the pasture, watching the dog get the

cows together for the homeward march. He did it so well and, withal,

so willingly, that there was no call for us to trouble ourselves

in keeping up with him. We waited instead at the open bars until

the hay-wagon had passed through, rocking so heavily in the ancient

pitch-hole, as it did so, that the driver was nearly thrown off his

perch on the top of the high load. Then we put up the bars, and fell

in close behind the haymakers. A rich cloud of dust, far ahead on the

road, suggested that the dog was doing his work even too willingly,

but for the once we feared no rebuke. Almost anything might be condoned

that day.

Five grown-up men walked abreast down the highway, in the shadow

of the towering wagon mow, clad much alike in battered straw hats,

gray woollen shirts open at the neck, and rough old trousers bulging

over the swollen, creased ankles of thick boots. One had a scythe on

his arm; two others bore forks over their shoulders. By request, Hi

Tuckerman allowed me to carry his sickle.

Although my present visit to the farm had been of only a few days'

duration—and those days of strenuous activity darkened by a terrible

grief—I had come to be very friendly with Mr. Tuckerman. He took a

good deal more notice of me than the others did; and, when chance

and leisure afforded, addressed the bulk of his remarks to me. This

favoritism, though it fascinated me, was not without its embarrassing

side. Hi Tuckerman had taken part in the battle of Gaines's Mill two

years before, and had been shot straight through the tongue. One

could still see the deep scar on each of his cheeks, a sunken and

hairless pit in among his sandy beard. His heroism in the war and

his good qualities as a citizen had earned for him the esteem of

his neighbors, and they saw to it that he never wanted for work. But

their present respect for him stopped short of the pretence that they

enjoyed hearing him talk. Whenever he attempted conversation, people

moved away, or began boisterous dialogues with one another to drown

him out. Being a sensitive man, he had come to prefer silence to these

rebuffs among those he knew. But he still had a try at the occasional

polite stranger—and I suppose it was in this capacity that I won

his heart. Though I never of my own initiative understood a word he

said, Marcellus sometimes interpreted a sentence or so for me, and I

listened to all the rest with a fraudulently wise face. To give only a

solitary illustration of the tax thus levied on our friendship, I may

mention that when Hi Tuckerman said "_Aah!_-ah-_aah!_-uh," he meant

"Rappahannock," and he did this rather better than a good many other

words.

"Rappahannock," alas! was a word we heard often enough in those days,

along with Chickahominy and Rapidan, and that odd Chattahoochee, the

sound of which raised always in my boyish mind the notion that the

geography-makers must have achieved it in their baby-talk period. These

strange Southern river names and many more were as familiar to the

ears of these four other untravelled Dearborn County farmers as the

noise of their own shallow Nedahma rattling over its pebbles in the

valley yonder. Only when their slow fancy fitted substance to these

names they saw in mind's eye dark, sinister, swampy currents, deep and

silent, and discolored with human blood.

Two of these men who strode along behind the wagon were

young half-uncles of mine, Myron and Warren Turnbull, stout,

thick-shouldered, honest fellows not much out of their teens, who

worked hard, said little, and were always lumped together in speech, by

their family, the hired help, and the neighbors, as "the boys." They

asserted themselves so rarely, and took everything as it came with

such docility, that I myself, being in my eleventh year, thought of

them as very young indeed. Next them walked a man, hired just for the

haying, named Philleo, and then, scuffling along over the uneven humps

and hollows on the outer edge of the road, came Si Hummaston, with the

empty ginger-beer pail knocking against his knees.

As Tuckerman's "Hi" stood for Hiram, so I assume the other's "Si" meant

Silas, or possibly Cyrus. I dare say no one, not even his mother, had

ever called him by his full name. I know that my companion, Marcellus

Jones, who wouldn't be thirteen until after Thanksgiving, habitually

addressed him as Si, and almost daily I resolved that I would do so

myself. He was a man of more than fifty, I should think, tall, lean,

and what Marcellus called "bible-backed." He had a short iron-gray

beard and long hair. Whenever there was any very hard or steady work

going, he generally gave out and went to sit in the shade, holding a

hand flat over his heart, and shaking his head dolefully. This kept a

good many from hiring him, and even in haying-time, when everybody on

two legs is of some use, I fancy he would often have been left out if

it hadn't been for my grandparents. They respected him on account of

his piety and his moral character, and always had him down when extra

work began. He was said to be the only hired man in the township who

could not be goaded in some way into swearing. He looked at one slowly,

with the mild expression of a heifer calf.

We had come to the crown of the hill, and the wagon started down the

steeper incline, with a great groaning of the brake. The men, by some

tacit understanding, halted and overlooked the scene.

The big old stone farm-house—part of which is said to date almost

to the Revolutionary times—was just below us, so near, indeed, that

Marcellus said he had once skipped a scaling-stone from where we stood

to its roof. The dense, big-leafed foliage of a sap-bush, sheltered

in the basin which dipped from our feet, pretty well hid this roof

now from view. Farther on, heavy patches of a paler, brighter green

marked the orchard, and framed one side of a cluster of barns and

stables, at the end of which three or four belated cows were loitering

by the trough. It was so still that we could hear the clatter of the

stanchions as the rest of the herd sought their places inside the

milking-barn.

The men, though, had no eyes for all this, but bent their gaze fixedly

on the road, down at the bottom. For a long way this thoroughfare was

bordered by a row of tall poplars, which, as we were placed, receded

from the vision in so straight a line that they seemed one high, fat

tree. Beyond these one saw only a line of richer green, where the

vine-wrapped rail-fences cleft their way between the ripening fields.

"I'd 'a' took my oath it was them," said Philleo. "I can spot them

grays as fur's I can see 'em. They turned by the school-house there,

or I'll eat it, school-ma'am 'n' all. And the buggy was follerin' 'em,

too."

"Yes, I thought it was them," said Myron, shading his eyes with his

brown hand.

"But they ought to got past the poplars by this time, then," remarked

Warren.

"Why, they'll be drivin' as slow as molasses in January," put in Si

Hummaston. "When you come to think of it, it _is_ pretty nigh the same

as a regular funeral. You mark my words, your father'll have walked

them grays every step of the road. I s'pose he'll drive himself—he

wouldn't trust bringin' Alvy home to nobody else, would he? I know I

wouldn't, if the Lord had given _me_ such a son; but then he didn't!"

"No, He didn't!" commented the first speaker, in an unnaturally loud

tone of voice, to break in upon the chance that Hi Tuckerman was

going to try to talk. But Hi only stretched out his arm, pointing the

forefinger toward the poplars.

Sure enough, something was in motion down at the base of the shadows

on the road. Then it crept forward, out in the sunlight, and separated

itself into two vehicles. A farm wagon came first, drawn by a team

of gray horses. Close after it followed a buggy, with its black top

raised. Both advanced so slowly that they seemed scarcely to be moving

at all.

"Well, I swan!" exclaimed Si Hummaston, after a minute, "it's Dana

Pillsbury drivin' the wagon after all! Well—I dunno—yes, I guess

that's prob'bly what I'd 'a' done too, if I'd b'n your father. Yes, it

does look more correct, his follerin' on behind, like that. I s'pose

that's Alvy's widder in the buggy there with him."

"Yes, that's Serena—it looks like her little girl with her," said

Myron, gravely.

"I s'pose we might's well be movin' along down," observed his brother,

and at that we all started.

We walked more slowly now, matching our gait to the snail-like progress

of those coming toward us. As we drew near to the gate, the three hired

men instinctively fell behind the brothers, and in that position the

group halted on the grass, facing our drive-way where it left the main

road. Not a word was uttered by any one. When at last the wagon came

up, Myron and Warren took off their hats, and the others followed suit,

all holding them poised at the level of their shoulders.

Dana Pillsbury, carrying himself rigidly upright on the box-seat,

drove past us with eyes fixed straight ahead, and a face as coldly

expressionless as that of a wooden Indian. The wagon was covered all

over with rubber blankets, so that whatever it bore was hidden. Only

a few paces behind came the buggy, and my grandfather, old Arphaxed

Turnbull, went by in his turn with the same averted, far-away gaze,

and the same resolutely stolid countenance. He held the restive young

carriage horse down to a decorous walk, a single firm hand on the tight

reins, without so much as looking at it. The strong yellow light of the

declining sun poured full upon his long gray beard, his shaven upper

lip, his dark-skinned, lean, domineering face—and made me think of

some hard and gloomy old prophet seeing a vision, in the back part of

the Old Testament. If that woman beside him, swathed in heavy black

raiment, and holding a child up against her arm, was my Aunt Serena, I

should never have guessed it.

We put on our hats again, and walked up the drive-way with measured

step behind the carriage till it stopped at the side-piazza stoop.

The wagon had passed on toward the big new red barn—and crossing its

course I saw my Aunt Em, bareheaded and with her sleeves rolled up,

going to the cow-barn with a milking-pail in her hand. She was walking

quickly, as if in a great hurry.

"There's your Ma," I whispered to Marcellus, assuming that he would

share my surprise at her rushing off like this, instead of waiting to

say 'How-d'-do' to Serena. He only nodded knowingly, and said nothing.

No one else said much of anything. Myron and Warren shook hands in

stiff solemnity with the veiled and craped sister-in-law, when their

father had helped her and her daughter from the buggy, and one of them

remarked in a constrained way that the hot spell seemed to keep up

right along. The new comers ascended the steps to the open door, and

the woman and child went inside. Old Arphaxed turned on the threshold,

and seemed to behold us for the first time.

"After you've put out the horse," he said, "I want the most of yeh to

come up to the new barn. Si Hummaston and Marcellus can do the milkin'."

"I kind o' rinched my wrist this forenoon," put in Si, with a note of

entreaty in his voice. He wanted sorely to be one of the party at the

red barn.

"Mebbe milkin' 'll be good for it," said Arphaxed, curtly. "You and

Marcellus do what I say, and keep Sidney with you." With this he, too,

went into the house.