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:--

"D