over and turned into wild land again.

* * * * *

I had visited this farm of mine many times since that first day, but
since the last time I had been there I had found out, luckily, something
about its last tenant. An old lady whom I knew in the village had told
me that when she was a child she remembered another very old woman, who
used to live here all alone, far from any neighbors, and that one
afternoon she had come with her mother to see her. She remembered the
house very well; it was larger and better than most houses in the
region. Its owner was the last of her family; but why she lived alone,
or what became of her at last, or of her money or her goods, or who were
her relatives in the town, my friend did not know. She was a thrifty,
well-to-do old soul, a famous weaver and spinner, and she used to come
to the meeting-house at the Old Fields every Sunday, and sit by herself
in a square pew. Since I knew this, the last owner of my farm has become
very real to me, and I thought of her that day a great deal, and could
almost see her as she sat alone on her door-step in the twilight of a
summer evening, when the thrushes were calling in the woods; or going
down the hills to church, dressed in quaint fashion, with a little
sadness in her face as she thought of her lost companions and how she
did not use to go to church alone. And I pictured her funeral to myself,
and watched her carried away at last by the narrow road that wound
among the trees; and there was nobody left in the house after the
neighbors from the nearest farms had put it to rights, and had looked
over her treasures to their hearts' content. She must have been a
fearless woman, and one could not stay in such a place as this, year in
and year out, through the long days of summer and the long nights of
winter, unless she found herself good company.

I do not think I could find a worse avenue than that which leads to my
farm, I think sometimes there must have been an easier way out which I
have yet failed to discover, but it has its advantages, for the trees
are beautiful and stand close together, and I do not know such green
brakes anywhere as those which grow in the shadiest places. I came into
a well-trodden track after a while, which led into a small granite
quarry, and then I could go faster, and at last I reached a pasture wall
which was quickly left behind and I was only a little way from the main
road. There were