"Would to Heaven he may," he said. "If they come who should, to-day, we may learn of him—for to-day my children should come up from all the quarters of the land where they are scattered—the East, the West, the North, the South—to join with me in the Festival of Thanksgiving which now draws near. My head is whitened with many winters, and I shall see them for the last time." Sylvester continued: "If they come—in this calm season, which, so soft and sweet, seems the gentle dawn of the coming world—we shall have, I feel, our last re-gathering on earth! But they come not; my eyes are weary with watching afar off, and I cannot yet discern that my children bear me in remembrance, in this grateful season of the year. Why do they not come?"
The aged patriarch of the family bowed his head and was silent. From the broom-corn the gentle voice stole again:
Why sings the robin in the wood?
For him her music is not shed:
Why blind-brook sparkle through the field?
He may be dead! he may be dead!
The murmur of Miriam's musical lamenting had scarcely died away on the dreamy air, when there came hurrying forward from the garden—where she had been tending the great thanksgiving pumpkin, which was her special charge—the black servant of the household, Mopsey by name, who, with her broad-fringed cap flying all abroad, and her great eyes rolling, spoke out as she approached—
"Do hear dat, massa?"
"I hear nothing, Mopsey."
"Dere, don't you hear't now? Dey're coming!"
With faces of curiosity, and ears erect, they listened. There was a peculiar sound in the air, and on closer attention they discerned, in the stillness of the morning, the jingling traces of the stage-coach, on the cross-road, through the fields.
"They are not coming," said old Sylvester, when the sound had died away in the distance; "the stage has taken the other road."
"Dat may be, grandfather," Mopsey spoke up, "but for all dey may come. Ugly Davis, when he drive, don't always turn out of his way to come up here. Dey may be on de corner."