shelf outside, which supported the wooden water bucket and the
long-handled gourd.

"You can go when I come back," he said at last, adding with an effort,
"or, if it's so bad, I can stay at home."

But, having asserted her supremacy over his inclinations, Marthy Burr
relented. "Oh, I don't know as I'll go in to-day," she returned. "I
ain't got enough teeth left now to chew on, an' I don't believe it's the
teeth, nohow. It's the gums--"

She retreated into the room, whence the shrill voice of Sairy Jane
inquired:

"Air you up, ma? Why, 'tain't day!"

Nicholas closed the door and went out upon the porch. The yard looked
deserted and desolated, giving him a sudden realisation of his own
littleness and the immensity of the hour. It was as if the wheels of
time had stopped in the dim promise of things unfulfilled. A broken
scythe lay to one side amid the straggling ailanthus shoots; near the
wood-pile there was a wheelbarrow half filled with chips, and at a
little distance the axe was poised upon a rotten log. From the small
coops beside the hen-house came an anxious clucking as the fluffy yellow
chickens strayed beneath the uneven edges of their pointed prisons and
made independent excursions into the world.

In the far east the day was slowly breaking, and the open country was
flooded with pale, washed-out grays, like the background of an
impressionist painting. A heavy dew had risen in the night, and as the