"Word will be sent to you some day," Tug said, as if the music had suggested it, "that little Ben is—" he paused, and shivered, dreading to pronounce the word—"worse. I wish you would get word to me some way, without letting any one know it; I want to go away somewhere. Then you can come out for me, and tell them on your return that I could not be found. It is bad enough for me to look at him now; I could never forget my sin toward him were I to see him dead. Of course you will go with him to the cemetery, with Mrs. Dorris and Mrs. Wedge and Betty; and I would like to have the baby at poor Ben's funeral, for he thinks so much of it, but it will be better for me to stay away, though I want them to think it accidental. When I return, you can show me the place, and on my way to and from the town I will stop there and think of the hymn which Mrs. Dorris plays so much."
The sun is going down, and it seems to pause on the hill to take a last look at the town. Perhaps it is tired of seeing it from day to day, and will in future travel a new route, where objects of more interest may be seen. Anyway, it lingers on the hill, and looks at the ragged streets and houses of the unfortunate town down by the river, which is always hurrying away, as if to warn the people below to avoid Davy's Bend, where there is little business, and no joy.
When its face is half obscured by the hill, the sun seems to remember The Locks, with whose history it has been familiar, and looks that way. So much shadow has gathered around it already from the woods across the river that objects are no longer to be distinguished: nothing but the huge outlines. At last the sun disappears behind the hill, but a friendly ray comes back, and looks toward The Locks until even the church steeple disappears; and Davy's Bend, and The Locks, with its sorrow and its step on the stair, are lost in the darkness.
By the Same Author.
THE STORY OF A COUNTRY TOWN.
Howells pronounces it "this remarkable novel ... uncommonly interesting."
Mark Twain finds the style "simple, sincere, direct, and at the same time so clear and so strong."
The Springfield Republican finds in it "a distinct flavor of its own ... the freshness and strangeness of the prairie life."
The Chicago Inter-Ocean finds it "the most dramatic of our American novels ... a drama of direct appeal."