Hephzibah rose wearily to her feet. "Sometimes I think I have,
Theron," she said.
"Well,"—he hesitated,—"ain't it 'most—supper-time?"
"I s'pose 'tis," she assented, listlessly, and dragged herself from the room.
It was not long after this that the picture disappeared from the parlor. Hephzibah had borne it very carefully to her room and hung it on the wall at the foot of her bed, where her eyes would open upon it the first thing every morning. Each day she talked to it, and each day it grew to be more and more a part of her very self. Not until the picture had been there a week, however, did she suddenly realize that it represented the twilight hour; then, like a flash of light, came her inspiration.
"It's at sunset—I'll go out at sunset! Now my Angelus will come to me," she cried softly. "I know it will!"
Then did the little hillside farmhouse see strange sights indeed. Each night, as the sun dropped behind the far-away hills, Hephzibah left her work and passed through the kitchen door, her face uplifted, and her eyes on the distant sky-line.
Sometimes she would turn to the left to the open field and stand there motionless, unconsciously falling into the reverent attitude now so familiar to her; sometimes she would turn to the right and pause at the brow of the hill, where the valley in all its panorama of loveliness lay before her; and sometimes she would walk straight ahead to the old tumble-down gate where she might face the west and watch the rose change to palest amber in the sky.
At first her eyes saw but grass, sky, and dull-brown earth, and her thoughts turned in bitterness to her unfinished tasks; but gradually the witchery of the summer night entered her soul and left room for little else. Strange faces, peeping in and out of the clouds, looked at her from the sky; and fantastic figures, clothed in the evening mist, swept up the valley to her feet. The grass assumed a deeper green, and the trees stood out like sentinels along the hilltop behind the house. Even when she turned and went back to the kitchen, and took upon herself once more the accustomed tasks, her eyes still faintly glowed with the memory of what they had seen.
"It do beat all," said Theron a month later to Helen Raymond, who was again a visitor at the farm,—"it do beat all, Helen, what's come over yer aunt. She used ter be nervous-like, and fretted, an' things never went ter suit. Now she's calm, an' her eyes kind o' shine—'specially when she comes in from one of them tramps of hers outdoors. She says it's her Angelus—if ye know what that is; but it strikes me as mighty queer—it do, Helen, it do!"
And Helen smiled, content.