Project Gutenberg's The Stillwater Tragedy, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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Title: The Stillwater Tragedy

Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Release Date: April, 2004 [EBook #5435]
Posting Date: July 11, 2010
[This file last updated on July 21, 2010]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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The Stillwater Tragedy

By Thomas Bailey Aldrich

I

It is close upon daybreak. The great wall of pines and hemlocks
that keep off the west 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 form 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!

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 cannot last until 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 the 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 head-stones? No, that is only Slocum's Marble Yard, with
the fini