tapped on the door at his left.

"Come in!" said a voice.

"Sam!" said Calvin Parks; and he stepped into the room.

"How are you, Sam?" he began. "How are you--why, where's Sim?" he added
in an altered tone. "Where's your Ma?"

A little man in snuff-brown clothes, with a red flannel waistcoat, came
forward.

"Calvin Parks," he said, "don't tell me this is you!"

"I won't!" said Calvin. "I'll tell you it's old John Tyseed if that'll
do you any good. What I want to know is, where's the rest of you? Don't
tell me there's anything happened to your Ma and Sim, Sam Sill!"

The little man cast a curious look toward a door that stood ajar not
far from where he sat. He was silent a moment, and then said in a half
whisper, "Ma is gone, Calvin!"

"Gone!" repeated the visitor. "What do you mean by gone?"

"Dead!" said the little man. "Departed. No more."

"Sho!" said Calvin Parks. "Is that so? Well, I'm sorry to hear it, Sam!
And I'm--well, astounded is the word. Your Ma gone! Well, now! she was
one, somehow or other of it, never seemed as if she _could_ go."

"I expect," said Mr. Samuel Sill in the same subdued tone, "she is with
the blessed;" he reflected a moment, and added, "and with father!"

"To be sure! naturally!" said Calvin Parks reassuringly. "How long since
you laid her away, Sam?"

"We laid her away," said Sam, "a year ago, Calvin. She'd been poorly for
a long spell, droopin' kind of; nothing to take a holt of. Kep' up
round and done the work, but her victuals didn't relish, nor yet they
didn't set. She knew her time was come. She said to me and--the other
one," (again he cast a curious look toward the open door), "sittin' in
this very room--'Boys,' she says, 'my stummick is leavin' me; and
without a stummick I have no wish to remain, nor yet I don't believe it
would be wished. I expect I am about to depart this life.'"

"I want to know!" murmured Calvin Parks sympathetically. "She come as
close to it as that, did she?"

"About twice't a week," the little man continued, "she'd call us to come
in after she was in bed, and say she'd most likely be gone in the
mornin', and to be good boys, and keep the farm up as it should be.
First for a time we tried to reason her out of it like, for the Lord
didn't seem in no hurry, nor yet we weren't; but one night she seemed
set on it, told us goodbye, and all the rest of it. 'Well, mother!' I
says, 'if you see father, tell him the hay's all in!' I says. Sure
enoug