simple needs. Then, before he could realize the truth, he was left alone at
her wintry grave; neighbors dispersed after the brief service, and he plodded
back to his desolate home. There was no relative to step in and partially
make good his loss. Some of the nearest residents sent a few cooked
provisions until he could get help, but these attentions soon ceased. It was
believed that he was abundantly able to take care of himself, and he was left
to do so. He was not exactly unpopular, but had been much too reticent and
had lived too secluded a life to find uninvited sympathy now. He was the last
man, however, to ask for sympathy or help; and this was not due to
misanthropy, but simply to temperament and habits of life. He and his wife
had been sufficient for each other, and the outside world was excluded chiefly
because they had not time or taste for social interchanges. As a result, he
suffered serious disadvantages; he was misunderstood and virtually left to
meet his calamity alone.

But, indeed he could scarcely have met it in any other way. Even to his wife,
he had never formed the habit of speaking freely of his thoughts and feelings.
There had been no need, so complete was the understanding between them. A
hint, a sentence, reveled to each other their simple and limited processes of
thought. To talk about her now to strangers was impossible. He had no
language by which to express the heavy, paralyzing pain in his heart.

For a time he performed necessary duties in a dazed, mechanical way. The
horses and live stock were fed regularly, the cows milked; but the milk stood
in the dairy room until it spoiled. Then he would sit down at his desolate
hearth and gaze for hours into the fire, until it sunk down and died out.
Perhaps no class in the world suffers from such a terrible sense of loneliness
as simple-natured country people, to whom a very few have been all the company
they required.