LITMIR.BIZ

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She never said another thing, but just died without so much as knowin' Debby. She and the twins went the same day, and Debby buried 'em in one grave.

      "It took her all day to dig it, she said. They was afraid of wolves in them days and had to have their ​graves deep. The baby, the one that was to be my grandfather, played 'round while she was diggin', and she had to stop to milk the cow and git his meals for him. She got the bodies over to the grave, one at a time, draggin' 'em on the wood-sled. When she was ready to shovel the dirt back in, twas gettin to be twilight, and she said the thrushes were beginnin' to sing—she made the baby kneel down and she got on her knees beside him and took hold of his hand to say a prayer. She was just about wore out, as you can think, and scared to death, and she'd never known any prayer, anyhow. All she could think to say was 'Lord—Lord—Lord!' And she made the baby say it, over and over. I guess 'twas a good enough prayer too. When I married and come up here to live, seems as though I never heard the thrushes begin to sing in the evening without I looked down there and could almost see them two on their knees.

      "Well, there she was, fourteen years old, with a two-year-old baby to look out for, and all the rest of the family gone as though she'd dreamed 'em. She was sure she and little Eddie—you're named for him, Eddie, and don't you never forget it—would die, of course, like the others, but she wa'n't any hand to give up till she had to, and she wanted to die last, so to look out for the baby. So when she took sick she fought the smallpox just like a wolf, she used to tell us. She had to live, to take care of Eddie. She gritted her teeth and wouldn't die, though, as she always said, 'twould ha' been enough sight more comfortable than to live through what she did.

      "Some folks nowadays say it couldn't ha' been smallpox she had, or she couldn't ha managed. I don't know bout that. I guess twas plenty bad enough, anyhow. ​She was out of her head a good share of th' time, but she never forgot to milk the cow and give Eddie his meals. She used to fight up on her knees (there was a week when she couldn't stand without fallin' over in a faint) and then crawl out to the cow-shed and sit down flat on the ground and reach up to milk. One day the fever was so bad she was clear crazy and she thought angels in silver shoes come right out there, in the manure an all, and milked for her and held the cup to Eddie's mouth.

      "An' one night she thought somebody, with a big black cape on, come and stood over her with a knife. She riz up in bed and told him to 'git out! She'd have to stay to take care of the baby! And she hit at the knife so fierce she knocked it right out'n his hand. Then she fainted away agin. She didn't come to till mornin', and when she woke up she knew she was goin' to live. She always said her hand was all bloody that morning from a big cut in it, and she used to show us the scar—a big one 'twas, too. But I guess most likely that come from something else. Folks was awful superstitious in them days, and Aunt Debby was always kind o' queer.

      "Well, an' so she did live and got well, though she never grew a mite from that time. A little wizened-up thing she was, always; but I tell you folks round here thought a nawful lot of Aunt Debby! And Eddie, if you'll believe it, never took the sickness at all. They say, sometimes, babies don't.

      "They got a fam'ly to come and work the farm for 'em, and Debby she took care of her little brother, same as she always had. And he grew up and got married and come to live in this house and Aunt Debby lived with him. ​They did set great store by each other! Grandmother used to laugh and say grandfather and Aunt Debby didn't need no words to talk together. I was eight, goin' on nine—why, Susie, just your age—when Aunt Debby died. I remember as well the last thing she said. Somebody asked her if she was afraid. She looked down over the covers—I can see her now, like a old baby she looked, so little and so light on the big feather-bed, and she said, 'Is a grain o' wheat scared when you drop it in the ground?' I always thought that wa'n't such a bad thing for a child to hear said.

      "She'd wanted to be buried there beside the others and grandfather did it so. While he was alive he took care of the graves and kept 'em in good order; and after I married and come here to live I did. But I'm gettin' on now, and I want you young folks should know 'bout it and do it after I'm gone.

      "Now, here, Susie, take this pot of petunias and set it out on the head of the grave that's got a stone over it. And if you're ever inclined to think you have a hard time, just you remember Aunt Debby and shut your teeth and hang on! If you tip the pot bottom-side up, and knock on it with a stone, it'll all slip out easy. Now go along with you. We've got to be starting for home soon."

      There was a brief pause and then the cheerful voice went on: "If there's any flower I do despise, it's petunias! But 'twas Aunt Debby's special favorite, so I always start a pot real early and have it in blossom when her birthday comes round."

      By the sound she was struggling heavily to her feet. "Yes, do, for goodness' sakes, haul me up, will ye? ​I'm as stiff as an old horse. I don't know what makes me so rheumaticky. My folks ain't, as a general thing."

      There was so long a silence that the girl inside the house wondered if they were gone, when Mrs. Pritchard's voice began again: "I do like to come up here! It 'minds me of him an' me livin' here when we was young. We had a good time of it!"

      "I never could see," commented the other, "how you managed when he went away t' th' war."

      "Oh, I did the way you do when you have to! I'd felt he ought to go, you know, as much as he did, so I was willin' to put in my best licks. An' I was young too—twenty-three—and only two of the children born then—and I was as strong as a ox. I never minded the work any. 'Twas the days after battles, when we couldn't get no news, that was the bad part. Why, I could go to the very spot, over there where the butternut tree stands—'twas our garden then—where I heard he was killed at Gettysburg."

      "What did you do?" asked the other.

      "I went on hoein' my beans. There was the two children to be looked out for, you know. But I ain't mindin tellin' you that I can't look at a bean-row since without gettin' sick to my stomach and feelin' the goose-pimples start all over me."

      "How did you hear 'twan't so?"

      "Why, I was gettin' in the hay—up there where the oaks stand was our hay-field. I remember how sick the smell of the hay made me, and when the sweat run down into my eyes I was glad to feel 'em smart and sting—well, Abby, you just wait till you hear your ​Nathan'l is shot through the head and you'll know how I was—well, all of a sudden—somebody took the fork out'n my hand—an'—an' said—'here, you drive an I'll pitch—and there—'twas—twas——"

      "Why, Grandma Pritchard! You're——"

      "No, I ain't, either; I ain't such a fool, I hope! Why, see me cry like a old numskull! Ain't it ridic'lous how you can talk 'bout deaths and buryin's all right, and can't tell of how somebody come back from the grave without—where in th' nation is my handkerchief! Why, Abby, things ain't never looked the same to me from that minute on. I tell you—I tell you—I was real glad to see him!

      "Good land, what time o' day do you suppose it can be? Susie! Eddie! Come, git your berries and start home!"

      The two voices began to sound more faintly as the old woman's crutch rang on the stones. "Well, Abby, when I come up here and remember how I farmed it alone for four years, I say to myself that 'twan't only th' men that set the slaves free. Them that stayed to home was allowed to have their share in the good——" The syllables blurred into an indistinguishable hum and there fell again upon the house its old mantle of silence.

      As if aroused by this from an hypnotic spell, the girl on the hay sat up suddenly, pressing her hands over her eyes; but she did not shut out a thousand thronging visions. There was not a sound but the loud throbbing of the pulses at her temples; but never again could there be silence for her in that spot. The air was thick with murmurs which beat against her ears. She was trembling as she slipped down from the hay and, walking unsteadily ​to the door, stood looking half-wildly out into the haunted twilight.

      The faint sound of the brook rose liquid in the quiet evening air.

      There, where the butternut tree stood, had been the garden!

      The white birches answered with a

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