THE REVERCOMBS


On the morning after the meeting at Bottom's Ordinary, Abel Revercomb
came out on the porch of the little house in which he lived, and looked
across the steep rocky road to the mill-race which ran above a silver
stream known as Sycamore Creek. The grist-mill, a primitive log
building, worked after ancient methods, had stood for a hundred years
or more beside a crooked sycamore tree, which grew mid-way of the stream
and shaded the wheel and the shingled roof from the blue sky above. The
old wooden race, on which the young green mosses shone like a coating of
fresh paint on a faded surface, ran for a short distance over the brook,
where the broad yellow leaves drifted down to the deep pond below.
Across the slippery poplar log, which divided the mill from the road and
the house occupied by the miller, there was a stretch of good corn land,
where the corn stood in shocks after the harvest, and beyond this the
feathery bloom of the broomsedge ran to the luminous band of marshes on
the far horizon.

From the open door before which the miller was standing, there came the
clatter of breakfast dishes and the sound of Scripture text quoted in
the voice of his mother. Above his head several strings of red pepper
hung drying, and these rustled in the wind with a grating noise that
seemed an accompaniment to the speaker in the kitchen.

"The Lord said that, an' I reckon He knew His own mind when He was
speakin' it," remarked Sarah Revercomb as she put down the coffeepot.

"I declare there's mother at it again," observed Abel to himself with
a frown--for it was Sarah's fate that an excess of virtue should have