mask, and the coverlet was of some quaint crocheted work that hung in
fringed ends to the floor. Here again from the threadbare velvet carpet
the blue poppies stared back at him.

An acorn dropped on the roof, and in spite of Molly's warning, he
started and glanced toward the window, where a frosted pattern of ivy
showed like a delicate lacework on the small greenish panes. Another
dropped; then another. Gradually he began to listen for the sound and to
miss it when there came a long silence. One might easily imagine it
to be the tapping of ghostly fingers--of the fingers of pretty Janet
Merryweather--some quarter of a century earlier. Her daughter was hardly
more than twenty now, he supposed, and he wondered how long the mad
idyllic period had lasted before her birth? Turning to the books on the
table, he opened one and a yellowed fragment of paper fluttered to the
floor at his feet. When he stooped after it, he saw that there was a
single word on it traced faintly in his uncle's hand: "To-morrow."

And then, being a person whose imagination dealt with the obvious,
he undressed, blew out the light, and fell peacefully asleep to the
dropping of acorns.

CHAPTER IV

THE REVERCOMBS

On the morning after the meeting at Bottom's Ordinary, Abel Revercomb
came out on the porch of the little house in which he lived, and looked
across the steep rocky road to the mill-race which ran above a silver
stream known as Sycamore Creek. The grist-mill, a primitive log
building, worked after ancient methods, had stood for a hundred years
or more beside a crooked sycamore tree, which grew mid-way of the stream
and shaded the wheel and the shingled roof from the blue sky above. The
old wooden race, on which the young green mosses shone like a coating of
fresh paint on a faded surface, ran for a short distance over the brook,
where the broad yellow leaves drifted down to the deep pond below.
Across the slippery poplar log, which divided the mill from the road and
the house occupied by the miller, there was a stretch of good corn land,
where the corn stood in shocks after the harvest, and beyond this the
feathery bloom of the broomsedge ran to the luminous band of marshes on
the far horizon.

From the open door before which the miller was standing, there came the
clatter of breakfast dishes and the sound of Scripture text quoted in
the voice of his mother. Above his head several strings of red pepper
hung drying, and these rus