ast time.
Several times she left Raby in the boat, and walked as far as the
Fairfield guide-post, and returned. At last she had rehearsed the
terrible drama so many times that it almost seemed to her as if it had
already happened, and she found it strange to be in her own house with
her husband and Jim and Sally and her servants. Already she began to
feel herself dissevered from them. When every thing was ready, she
shrank from taking the final step. Three times she went with Raby to the
Lake, having determined within herself not to return; but her courage
failed her, and she found a ready excuse for deferring all until the
next day. She had forgotten some little thing, or the weather looked
threatening; and the last time she went back, it was simply to kiss her
husband again. "One day more or less cannot make any difference," she
said to herself. "I will kiss Eben once more." Oh, what a terrible thing
is this barrier of flesh, which separates soul from soul, even in the
closest relation! Our nearest and dearest friend, sitting so near that
we can hear his every breath, can see if his blood runs by a single
pulse-beat faster to his cheek, may yet be thinking thoughts which, if
we could read them, would break our hearts. When the time came in which
Eben Williams tried to recall the last moments in which he had seen his
wife, all he could recollect was that she kissed him several times with
more than usual affection. At the time he had hardly noted it: he was
just setting off to see a patient, and Raby was urging Hetty to make
haste; and their good-byes had been hurried.

It was on a warm hazy day in October. The woods through which Hetty and
Raby walked to the lake were full of low dogwood bushes, whose leaves
were brilliant; red, pink, yellow, and in places almost white. Raby
gathered boughs of these, and carried them to the boat. It was his
delight to scatter such bright leaves from the stern of the boat, and
watch them following in its wake. They landed on the small island
nearest the Springton shore, and looked for wild grapes, which were now
beginning to be ripe. After an hour or two here, Hetty told Raby that
they must set out: she had errands to do in the town before going home.
She rowed very quickly to the beach, and, just as they were leaving the
boat, she exclaimed:

"Oh, Raby, I have left my shawl on the island; way around on the other
side it is too. I must row back and get it."

Raby was about to jump in