The day was warm and the sunshine fell caressingly over the pastures
as if it were trying to call back the flowers. By afternoon there was
a tinge of greenness on the slopes and under the gnarled apple-trees,
that had been lost for days before, and the distant hills and
mountains, which could be seen in a circle from the high land where
the Thacher farmhouse stood, were dim and blue through the Indian
summer haze. The old men who came to the funeral wore their faded
winter overcoats and clumsy caps all ready to be pulled down over
their ears if the wind should change; and their wives were also warmly
wrapped, with great shawls over their rounded, hard-worked shoulders;
yet they took the best warmth and pleasantness into their hearts, and
watched the sad proceedings of the afternoon with deepest interest.
The doctor came hurrying toward home just as the long procession was
going down the pasture, and he saw it crossing a low hill; a dark and
slender column with here and there a child walking beside one of the
elder mourners. The bearers went first with the bier; the track was
uneven, and the procession was lost to sight now and then behind the
slopes. It was forever a mystery; these people might have been a
company of Druid worshipers, or of strange northern priests and their
people, and the doctor checked his impatient horse as he watched the
retreating figures at their simple ceremony. He could not help
thinking what strange ways this child of the old farm had followed,
and what a quiet ending it was to her wandering life.
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