epochal, bringing change; and, one might say, it made a blot upon
this picture of the morning.

An observer standing upon the broad gallery, looking toward the
eastward and the southward, might have seen two figures just emerging
from the rim of the forest something like a mile away; and might then
have seen them growing slowly more distinct as they plodded up the
railway track toward the Big House. Presently these might have been
discovered to be a man and a woman; the former tall, thin, dark and
stooped; his companion, tall as himself, quite as thin, and almost as
bent. The garb of the man was nondescript, neutral, loose; his hat
dark and flapping. The woman wore a shapeless calico gown, and on her
head was a long, telescopic sunbonnet of faded pink, from which she
must perforce peer forward, looking neither to the right nor to the
left.

The travelers, indeed, needed not to look to the right or the left,
for the path of the iron rails led them directly on. Now and again
clods of new-broken earth caused them to stumble as they hobbled
loosely along. If the foot of either struck against the rail, its
owner sprang aside, as though in fear, toward the middle of the
track. Slowly and unevenly, with all the zigzags permissible within
the confining inches of the irons, they came on up toward the squat
little station-house. Thence they turned aside into the plantation
path and, still stumbling and zigzagging, ambled up toward the house.
They did not step to the gallery, did not knock at the door, or,
indeed, give any evidences of their intentions, but seated themselves
deliberately upon a pile of boards that lay near in the broad expanse
of the front yard. Here they remained, silent and at rest, fitting
well enough into the sleepy scene. No one in the house noticed them