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Nicholas Oldfield stood quite still, obedient to that touch upon his arm.

“It’s the name, Mary,” said he. “Why, Freeman Henry’s a Titcomb! He can’t help that. But he needn’t think he can buy Oldfield land, an’ set up a house there, as if ‘t was all in the day’s work. Why, Mary, I meant to leave that land to you! An’ p’raps you won’t marry. Nobody knows. Then, ‘t would stand in the name a mite longer.”

Mary blushed a little, but her eyes never wavered.

“No, gran’ther,” said she firmly, “I sha’n’t ever marry anybody.”

“Well, ye can’t tell,” responded Nicholas, with a sigh. “Ye can’t tell. He might take your name if he wanted ye enough; but I should call it a poor tool that would do that.”

He sighed again, as he reached for his hat, and Mary and he went out of the house together, hand in hand. At the gate they parted, and Nicholas took his way to the schoolhouse, where the town fathers were already assembled.

Since he passed over it that afternoon, the road had changed, responsive to twilight and the coming dark. Nicholas knew it in all its phases, from the dawn of spring, vocal with the peeping of frogs, to the revery of winter, the silence of snow, and a hopeful glow in the west. Just here, by the barberry bush at the corner, he had stood still under the spell of Northern Lights. That was the night when his wife lay first in Tiverton churchyard; and he remembered, as a part of the strangeness and wonder of the time, how the north had streamed, and the neighboring houses had been rosy red. But at this hour of the brooding, sultry fall, there was a bitter fragrance in the air, and the world seemed tuned to the somnolent sound of crickets, singing the fields to sleep; That one little note brooded over the earth, and all the living things upon it: hovering, and crooning, and lulling them to the rest decreed from of old. The homely beauty of it smote upon him, though it could not cheer. A hideous progress seemed to threaten, not alone the few details it touched, but all the sweet, familiar things of life. Old War-Wool Eaton, in assailing the town’s historic peace, menaced also the crickets and the breath of asters in the air. He was the rampant spirit of an awful change. So, in the bitterness of revolt, Nicholas Oldfield marched on, and stepped silently into the little schoolhouse, to meet his fellows. They were standing about in groups, each laying down the law according to his kind. The doors were wide open, and Nicholas felt as if he had brought in with him the sounds of coming night. They kept him sane, so that he could hold his own, as he might not have done in a room full of winter brightness.

“Hullo!” cried Caleb Rivers, in his neutral voice. “Here’s Mr. Oldfield. Well, Mr. Oldfield, there’s a good deal on hand.”

“Called any votes?” asked Nicholas.

“Well, no,” said Caleb, scraping his chin. “I guess we’re sort o’ takin’ the sense o’ the meetin’.”

“Good deal like a quiltin’ so fur,” remarked Brad Freeman indulgently. “All gab an’ no git there!”

“They tell me,” said Uncle Eli Pike, approaching Nicholas as if he had something to confide, “that out west, where they have them new-fangled clocks, they’re all lighted up with ‘lectricity.”

“Do they so?” asked Caleb, but Nicholas returned, with an unwonted fierceness:–

“Does that go to the right spot with you? Do you want to see a clock-face starin’ over Tiverton, like a full moon, chargin’ ye to keep Old War-Wool Eaton in memory?”

“Well, no,” replied Eli gently, “I dunno’s I do, an’ I dunno but I do.”

“Might set a lantern back’ o’ the dial, an’ take turns lightin’ on ‘t,” suggested Brad Freeman.

“Might carve out a jack-o’-lantern like Old Eaton’s face,” supplemented Tom O’Neil irreverently.