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“They never passed me the compliment,” replied the wife. “I declare I didn’t covet the walk home; I’m most beat out, bein’ on foot so much. I was ‘most put out with ’em for letten’ of me see quite so plain that my room was better than my company. But I don’t know’s I blame ’em; they want to look an’ see what they’ve got, an’ kind of git by theirselves, I expect. ‘T was natural.”

Mrs. Downs knew that her husband would resent her first statements, being a sensitive and grumbling man. She had formed a pacific habit of suiting her remarks to his point of view, to save an outburst. He contented Himself with calling the Knowles girls hoggish, and put a direct question as to whether they had let fall any words about their situation, but Martha Downs was obliged to answer in the negative.

“Was Enoch Holt there after the folks come back from the grave?”

“He wa’n’t; they never give him no encouragement neither.”

“He appeared well, I must say,” continued Peter Downs. “He took his place next but one behind us in the procession, ‘long of Melinda Dutch, an’ walked to an’ from with her, give her his arm, and then I never see him after we got back; but I thought he might be somewhere in the house, an’ I was out about the barn an’ so on.”

“They was civil to him. I was by when he come, just steppin’ out of the bedroom after we’d finished layin’ the old Cap’n into his coffin. Hannah looked real pleased when she see Enoch, as if she hadn’t really expected him, but Betsey stuck out her hand’s if ‘t was an eend o’ board, an’ drawed her face solemner ‘n ever. There, they had natural feelin’s. He was their own father when all was said, the Cap’n was, an’ I don’t know but he was clever to ’em in his way, ‘ceptin’ when he disappointed Hannah about her marryin’ Jake Good’in. She l’arned to respect the old Cap’n’s foresight, too.”

“Sakes alive, Marthy, how you do knock folks down with one hand an’ set ’em up with t’ other,” chuckled Mr. Downs. They next discussed the Captain’s appearance as he lay in state in the front room, a subject which, with its endless ramifications, would keep the whole neighborhood interested for weeks to come.

An hour later the twinkling light in the Downs house suddenly disappeared. As Martha Downs took a last look out of doors through her bedroom window she could see no other light; the neighbors had all gone to bed. It was a little past nine, and the night was damp and still.

II.

The Captain Knowles place was eastward from the Downs’s, and a short turn in the road and the piece of hard-wood growth hid one house from the other. At this unwontedly late hour the elderly sisters were still sitting in their warm kitchen; there were bright coals under the singing tea-kettle which hung from the crane by three or four long pothooks. Betsey Knowles objected when her sister offered to put on more wood.

“Father never liked to leave no great of a fire, even though he slept right here in the bedroom. He said this floor was one that would light an’ catch easy, you r’member.”

“Another winter we can move down and take the bedroom ourselves–‘t will be warmer for us,” suggested Hannah; but Betsey shook her head doubtfully. The thought of their old father’s grave, unwatched and undefended in the outermost dark field, filled their hearts with a strange tenderness. They had been his dutiful, patient slaves, and it seemed like disloyalty to have abandoned the poor shape; to be sitting there disregarding the thousand requirements and services of the past. More than all, they were facing a free future; they were their own mistresses at last, though past sixty years of age. Hannah was still a child at heart. She chased away a dread suspicion, when Betsey forbade the wood, lest this elder sister, who favored their father’ s looks, might take his place as stern ruler of the household.