lly, in his solemn voice an' grave,
slow way of talkin',--"now, Mrs. Pyncheon, you must trust everythin'
to me. You're beat out. I've no women folks in my house, as you know;
but I'll ride to town an' get an old lady, a friend of mine, to come
out an' help you through. I'll see, too, that poor Micah has a coffin
an' a minister. Be the brave little woman, Mrs. Pyncheon, that Micah
would tell you to be, if he could speak. By sun-down I'll have
somebody you can talk to an' who'll cheer you up better than I can.
To-morrow--to-morrow we'll bury the poor man!"

When he said this it set me to cryin'. Then it was so still that I
looked up an' found myself alone. A-down the road was a line of dust,
an' I heard the muffled footfalls of neighbor King's horse on his way
to the village.

An' "to-morrow we'll bury him" were words that all that long,
lonesome, hot day kept soundin' in my ears as if some one was callin'
'em out with the tickin' of the clock. "Bury him"--an' Micah dead only
a few hours! I couldn't believe it, an' would stop an' listen for his
whistle at the barn, his talk to the horses, his rattle at the pump,
his footfall at the door, until, crazy with waitin,' I'd go over to
the bed, pull back the sheet, an' in the still face read why I should
never hear those happy sounds again--never again.

Ah, well! The sun went down at last; the long, dreary day was ended,
an' in the twilight came back my good neighbor with motherly Mrs.
Challen--an'--an'--it hurts me even now to tell it--the coffin for.
Micah. In it those two good people softly placed him, an' all that
night I watched its shape between me an' the window.

[Illustration: "MRS. CHALLEN HELD ME IN HER ARMS."]

The next day, in the mornin', under the trees in the little grove
across from the house, my Micah was laid to rest forever--placed so
that when I looked out of the window or the door I could see the mound
of earth between the fence of tree limbs woven around it, an' seem'
it, know that in that spot was buried one who in my young life was
more to me than earth or heaven. I never understood how I got through
those two terrible days. I can't remember distinctly. It's all
dream-like, as if in a thin, grayish fog. I know that Mrs. Challen
held me in her arms--for I was a fragile, girlish thing--like a
mother; that the minister said words I never heard; that the strange
faces of a few farm people from miles away looked at me; that the
grasshoppers were under