, "Story of a Bad Boy" in 1870, "Marjorie Daw"
in 1873, "Prudence Palfrey" in 1874, "The Queen of Sheba" in
1877, "The Stillwater Tragedy" in 1880, "From Ponkapog to
Pesth" in 1883, "The Sister's Tragedy" in 1891.

I

A SUNRISE IN STILLWATER[57]

It is close upon daybreak. The great wall of pines and hemlocks that
keep off the east wind from Stillwater stretches black and
indeterminate against the sky. At intervals a dull, metallic sound,
like the guttural twang of a violin string, rises from the
frog-invested swamp skirting the highway. Suddenly the birds stir in
their nests over there in the woodland, and break into that wild
jargoning chorus with which they herald the advent of a new day. In
the apple orchards and among the plum-trees of the few gardens in
Stillwater the wrens and the robins and the blue-jays catch up the
crystal crescendo, and what a melodious racket they make of it with
their fifes and flutes and flageolets!

[Footnote 57: From Chapter I of "The Stillwater Tragedy." Copyright,
1880, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Published by Houghton, Mifflin
Company.]

The village lies in a trance like death. Possibly not a soul hears
this music, unless it is the watchers at the bedside of Mr. Leonard
Tappleton, the richest man in town, who has lain dying these three
days, and can not last till sunrise. Or perhaps some mother, drowsily
hushing her wakeful baby, pauses a moment and listens vacantly to the
birds singing. But who else?

The hubbub suddenly ceases--ceases as suddenly as it began--and all is
still again in the woodland. But it is not so dark as before. A faint
glow of white light is discernible behind the ragged line of the tree
tops. The deluge of darkness is receding from the face of the earth,
as the mighty waters receded of old.

The roofs and tall factory chimneys of Stillwater are slowly taking
shape in the gloom. Is that a cemetery coming into view yonder, with
its ghostly architecture of obelisks and broken columns and huddled
headstones? No, that is only Slocum's marble yard, with the finished
and unfinished work heaped up like snowdrifts--a cemetery in embryo.
Here and there in an outlying farm a lantern glimmers in the
barn-yard: the cattle are having their fodder betimes. Scarlet-capped
chanticleer gets himself on the nearest rail fence and lifts up his
rancorous voice like some irate old cardinal launching the curse of
Rome. Something crawls swiftly along the g