Then they fell to discussing the probabilities of her future course. It
was not easy to predict.

"The Squire's left every thing to her, just as if she was a man. She can
sell the property right off, if she wants to, and go and live where she
likes," they said.

"Well, you may set your minds to rest on that," said old Deacon Little,
who had been the young squire's most intimate friend, and who knew Hetty
as well as if she were his own child, and loved her better; for his own
children, poor man, had nearly brought his gray hairs down to the grave
with distress and shame.

"Hetty Gunn'll never sell that farm, not a stick nor a stone on't, any
more than the old Squire himself would. You'll see, she'll keep it a
goin', jest the same's ever. It's a thousand pities, she warn't born a
boy."




II.

The funeral took place late in the afternoon of a warm April day. The
roads were very muddy, and the long procession wound back to the village
about as slowly as it had gone out. One by one, wagon after wagon fell
out of the line, and turned off to the right or left, until there were
left only the Gunns' big carryall, in which sat Hetty, with her two
house-servants,--an old black man and his wife, who had been in her