It was a sombre assembly, for every one wore whatever black her wardrobe afforded, and many funeral occasions had left an accumulation of mourning millinery in every house in the neighbourhood. But the limp crape veils and black gloves and pall-like cashmere shawls were all congregated in the dimly lighted parlour. In the old sitting-room it was as cheerful and homelike as ever, save for the still form in the centre.
Through an open window the western sun streamed into the big, hospitable room, across the bright home-made rag carpet. The old clock in the corner ticked with the placid, steady stroke that had never failed or faltered, in any vicissitude of the generations for which it had marked the changes. No fire blazed on the old hearthstone that had warmed the hearts as well as the hands of the whole countryside on many a cheerful occasion. But a great bough of dogwood, laid across the shining andirons, filled the space with coral berries that glowed like live embers as the sun stole athwart them.
"Oh, if the old room could only speak!" thought Miss Anastasia, when her turn came to pass reverently in for a last look at the peaceful face. "There would be no need of man's eulogy."
But man's eulogy was added presently, when the old minister came in and took his place beside the coffin of his lifelong friend and neighbour. The men outside the porch closed in around the windows to listen. The women in the back rows of chairs in the adjoining room leaned forward eagerly. Those farthest away caught only a faltering sentence now and then.
"A hospitality as warm as his own hearthstone, as wide as his broad acres.... No man can point to him and say he ever knowingly hurt or hindered a fellow creature.... He never measured out to any man a scant bushel. Be it grain or good-will, it was ever an overflowing measure...." But those who could not hear all that was said could make the silent places eloquent with their own recollections, for he had taken a father's interest in them all, and manifested it by a score of kindly deeds, too kindly to ever be forgotten.
It was a perfect autumn day, sunny and golden and still, save for the patter of dropping nuts and the dry rustle of fallen leaves. A purple haze rested on the distant horizon like the bloom on a ripened grape. Down through the orchard, when the simple service was over, they carried their old friend to the family burying-ground, and, although voices had choked, and eyes overflowed before, there was neither sob nor tear, when the light of the sunset struck across the low mound, heaped with its covering of glowing autumn leaves. For if grief has no part in the sunset glory that ends the day, or in the perfect fulness of the autumn time, then it must indeed stand hushed, when a life comes both to its sunset and its harvest, in such royal fashion.
That evening at the Cross-Roads, Bowser lighted the first fire of the season in the rusty old stove, for the night was chilly. One by one the men accustomed to gather around it dropped in and took their usual places. The event of the day was all that was spoken of.
"Do you remember what he said last Thanksgiving, nearly a year ago?" asked Bowser. "It came back to me as I stood and looked at him to-day, and if I'd never believed in immortality before, I'd 'a' had to have believed in it then. The words seemed to fairly shine out of his face. He said 'The best comes after the harvest, when the wheat goes to make up blood and muscle and brain; when it's raised to a higher order of life in man. And it's the same with me. At eighty-five, when it looks as if I'd about reached the end, I've come to believe that "the best is yet to be."'"
There was a long pause, and Cy Akers said, slowly, "Somehow I can't feel that he is dead. Seems as if he'd just gone away a while. But Lord! how we're going to miss him here at the store."