"Sure. There's no other way. I take it there's many a good winter's firing of wood down across the road atwixt here and there. There ain't much knowing where you can get along."
"But what is it?"
"We mustn't keep him," urged Barbara.
"No, I ain't goin' to be kep'. 'T won't do. I donno what it is. It's a kind of a turn. He's comin' partly out of it; but it's bad. He had a kind of a warnin' once before. It's his head. They're afraid it's appalectic, or paralettic, or sunthin'."
Robert looked very sober. He quite passed by the wonder of the gale, that another time would have stirred him to most lively speech. Robert "thought a good deal," as he expressed it, of Grandfather Holabird.
Harry Goldthwaite came through the brown room with his hat in his hand. How he ever found it we could not tell.
"I'll go with him," he said. "You won't be afraid now, will you, Barbara? I'm very sorry about Mr. Holabird."
He shook hands with Barbara,—it chanced that she stood nearest,—bade us all good night, and went away. We turned back silently into the brown room.
We were all quite hushed from our late excitement. What strange things were happening to-night!
All in a moment something so solemn and important was put into our minds. An event that,—never talked about, and thought of as little, I suppose, as such a one ever was in any family like ours,—had yet always loomed vaguely afar, as what should come some time, and would bring changes when it came, was suddenly impending.