"Therein I hear the Parcae reel
The threads of man at their humming wheel,
The threads of life and power and pain,
So sweet and mournful falls the strain."
EMERSON'S Harp.

Old Mrs. Butterfield had had her third stroke of paralysis, and died
of a Sunday night. She was all alone in her little cottage on the
river bank, with no neighbour nearer than Croft's, and nobody there
but a blind man and a small boy. Everybody had told her it was
foolish for a frail old woman of seventy to live alone in a house on
the river road, and everybody was pleased, in a discreet and
chastened fashion of course, that it had turned out exactly as they
had predicted.

Aunt Mehitable Tarbox was walking up to Milliken's Mills, with her
little black reticule hanging over her arm, and noticing that there
was no smoke coming out of the Butterfield chimney, and that the hens
were gathered about the kitchen door clamouring for their breakfast,
she thought it best to stop and knock. No response followed the
repeated blows from her hard knuckles. She then tapped smartly on
Mrs. Butterfield's bedroom window with her thimble finger. This
proving of no avail, she was obliged to pry open the kitchen shutter,
split open the screen of mosquito netting with her shears, and crawl
into the house over the sink. This was a considerable feat for a
somewhat rheumatic elderly lady, but this one never grudged trouble
when she wanted to find out anything.