the snow off the broom, and
went in and locked the door behind her.

On her way back to the kitchen she paused at Rebecca's little
bedroom. The waist of the new gown lay on the bad. She took it out
into the kitchen, and folded it carefully with the skirt and the
pieces; then she carried it up to the garret and laid it away in a
chest.

When Caleb and Ephraim came in from the barn they found Deborah
sitting at the window knitting a stocking. She did not look up when
they entered.

The corn was not yet shelled, and Caleb arranged his baskets in the
chimney-corner, and fell to again. Ephraim began teasing his mother
to let him crack some nuts, but she silenced him peremptorily. "Set
down an' help your father shell that corn," said she. And Ephraim
pulled a grating chair up to his father, muttering cautiously.

Caleb kept looking at Deborah anxiously. He glanced at the door
frequently.

"Where's Rebecca?" he asked at last.

"I dunno," replied Deborah.

"Has she laid down?"

"No, she ain't."

"She ain't gone out in the snow, has she?" Caleb said, with deploring
anxiety.

Deborah answered not a word. She pursed her lips and knitted.

"She ain't, has she, mother?"

"Keep on with your corn," said Deborah; and that was all she would
say.

Presently she arose and prepared dinner in the same dogged silence.
Caleb, and even Ephraim, watched her furtively, with alarmed eyes.

When Rebecca did not appear at the dinner-table Caleb did not say
anything about it, but his old face was quite pale. He ate his dinner
from the force of habit of over seventy years, during which time he
had always eaten his dinner, but he did not taste it consciously.

He made up his mind that as soon as he got up from the table he would
go over to Barney's and consult him. After he pushed his chair away
he was slipping out shyly, but Deborah stopped him.

"Set down an' finish that corn. I don't want it clutterin' up the
kitchen any longer," said she.

"I thought I'd jest slip out a minute, mother."

Deborah motioned him towards the chimney-corner and the baskets of
corn with a stern gesture, and Caleb obeyed. Ephraim, too, settled
down beside his father, and fell to shelling corn without being told.
He was quite cowed and intimidated by this strange mood of his
mother's, and involuntarily shrank closer to his father when she
passed near him.

Caleb and Ephraim both watched Deborah with furtive terror, as she
moved about, washing an