no what 't is. Mebbe you'd say it don't belong to a
meetin'. But when I come by an' see you all settin' here, it come over
me I'd like to tell somebody. Two weeks ago I was most crazy"--She
paused of necessity, for something broke in her voice.

"That's the afternoon Jim was took," whispered a woman to her neighbor.
Hannah Prime went on.

"I jest as soon tell it now. I can tell ye all together what I couldn't
say to one on ye alone; an' if anybody speaks to me about it
arterwards, they'll wish they hadn't. I was all by myself in the house.
I set down in my clock-room, about three in the arternoon, an' there I
set. I didn't git no supper. I couldn't. I set there an' heard the clock
tick. Byme-by it struck seven, an' that waked me up. I thought I'd gone
crazy. The figgers on the wall-paper provoked me most to death; an' that
red-an'-white tidy I made, the winter I was laid up, seemed to be
talkin' out loud. I got up an' run outdoor jest as fast as I could go. I
run out behind the house an' down the cart-path to that pile o' rocks
that overlooks the lake; an' there I got out o' breath an' dropped down
on a big rock. An' there I set, jest as still as I'd been settin' when I
was in the house."

Here a little girl stirred in her seat, and her mother leaned forward
and shook her, with alarming energy. "I never was so hard with Mary L.
afore," she explained the next day, "but I was as nervous as a witch. I
thought, if I heard a pin drop, I should scream."

"I dunno how long I set there," went on Hannah Prime, "but byme-by it
begun to come over me how still the lake was. 'Twas like glass; an' way
over where it runs in 'tween them islands, it burnt like fire. Then I
looked up a little further, to see what kind of a sky there was. 'T was
light green, with clouds in it, all fire, an' it begun to seem to me as
if it was a kind o' land an' water up there--like our'n, on'y not
solid. I set there an' looked at it; an' I picked out islands, an'
ma'sh-land, an' p'ints running out into the yeller-green sea. An'
everything grew stiller an' stiller. The loons struck up, down on the
lake, with that kind of a lonesome whinner; but that on'y made the rest
of it seem quieter. An' it begun to grow dark all 'round me. I dunno's I
ever noticed before jest how the dark comes. It sifted down like snow,
on'y you couldn't see it. Well, I set there, an' I tried to keep stiller
an' stiller, like everything else. Seemed as if I must. An' pretty soon