I always s'posed that the shock of his death comin' so awful
sudden unto her, killed his wife. She had been sick for a long
spell, she had consumption and dropsy, and so forth, and so forth,
for a long time, and after he wuz brought in dead, she didn't live
a week. She thought her eyes of him, for no earthly reason as I
could ever see. How strange, how strange a dispensation of
Providence it duz seem, that some women love some men, and vicy
versey and the same.

But she did jest about worship him, and she died whisperin' his
name, and reachin' out her hands as if she see him jest ahead of
her. And I told Josiah I didn't know but she did. I shouldn't
wonder a mite if she did see him, for there is only the veil of
mystery between us and the other world at any time, and she had
got so nigh to it, that I s'pose it got so thin that she could
see through it.

Just as you can see through the blue haze that lays before our
forest in Injun summer. Come nigh up to it and you can see the
silvery trunks of the maples and the red sumac leaves, and the
bright evergreens, and the forms of the happy hunters a passin'
along under the glint of the sunbeams and the soft shadows.

They died in Injun summer. I made a wreath myself of the
bright-colored leaves to lay on their coffins. Dead leaves, dead
to all use and purpose here, and yet with the bright mysterious
glow upon them that put me in mind of some immortal destiny and
blossoming beyond our poor dim vision. Jane Smedley wuz a good
woman, and so wuz Jim, good but shiftless.