The two voices began to sound more faintly as the old woman's crutch rang on the stones. "Well, Abby, when I come up here and remember how I farmed it alone for four years, I say to myself that 'twan't only th' men that set the slaves free. Them that stayed to home was allowed to have their share in the good——" The syllables blurred into an indistinguishable hum and there fell again upon the house its old mantle of silence.
As if aroused by this from an hypnotic spell, the girl on the hay sat up suddenly, pressing her hands over her eyes; but she did not shut out a thousand thronging visions. There was not a sound but the loud throbbing of the pulses at her temples; but never again could there be silence for her in that spot. The air was thick with murmurs which beat against her ears. She was trembling as she slipped down from the hay and, walking unsteadily to the door, stood looking half-wildly out into the haunted twilight.
The faint sound of the brook rose liquid in the quiet evening air.
There, where the butternut tree stood, had been the garden!
The white birches answered with a rustling stir in all their lightly poised leaves.
Up there, where the oaks were, had been the hay-field!
The twilight darkened. Through the forest, black on the crest of the overhanging mountain, shone suddenly the evening star.
There, before the door, had stood the waiting wood-sled!
The girl caught through the gathering dusk a gleam of magenta from the corner of the clearing.
Two hermit thrushes, distant in the forest, began to send up their poignant antiphonal evening chant.