People began to talk about the threshing of the grain, to bank up their cellars, and to speak of the portents of a severe winter. The leaves were all down. They lay a foot deep along the roads, where the maples grew in regular avenues, and rustled, wind-blown, between the tree trunks in the woodland. The squirrels skimmed about in their efforts to secure their winter hoard. In the woods, great heaps of hickory-nut hulls and emptied chestnut-burs, showed where, with their sharp teeth and persistent paws, they had removed the superfluous covering before storing away the nuts.
The horses were growing shaggy and the dogs' fur lengthening. In short, winter was drawing near.
In Homer Wilson's orchard all was noise, confusion, and work. Homer himself was packing the apples—putting in a layer of newspapers, then carefully "laying" by hand several rows of apples, before emptying in the pailfuls of picked fruit that were brought to him, for the bottom of a barrel in the orchard is the top of the barrel when it is opened by the dealers. Next in order to Homer was Sam Warner, who was heading the barrels, the tap-tapping of his hammer ringing clear in the frosty air, Homer shouting out directions every now and then in a sepulchral voice from the depths of the barrel. There was a great gathering in the orchard of the neighbors, for a fruit dealer had bought up all the apples in Jamestown to send to England, and they were to be shipped by the car-load upon a certain date. So, following the suggestion of the buyer (to whom time meant money), they had agreed to help each other with the fruit. This was not a usual custom in Jamestown; there was too much jealousy to admit of such interchange of labor.
It was Homer Wilson's benefit this day, and both outside in the orchard and within doors all was happy, hurrying confusion. There was nothing remarkable about the day or the scene; but exactly a year after this, Homer Wilson was to act in a somewhat different scene, and after he played his part in that his neighbors recalled this day "just a year ago." They said, "Who would have thought it?"
Bing White was in the Wilson orchard, and Si Warner, and other of their cronies. No one ever expected Bing to work; his idleness was looked upon with tolerant indifference, a perilous indication in this neighborhood, where to be a hard worker and a good church-goer meant perfection, and to fail in either grace was to be utterly lost. People began to look at Bing White attentively now and then, and shake their heads with ominous import, for the son and heir of the Whites was daily becoming more elfish-looking, more evil-eyed, more mocking of speech, more stubborn of purpose. After racing here and there over the orchard, he climbed (not without scratched hands and torn clothes) into the heart of a juniper tree that grew in the corner, and, hidden there, began to make what was known among school children in Jamestown as a "wolf-bite" upon his arm. This he did simply by baring the arm, putting his lips to the flesh, and sucking at it until the blood showed in red pin-points at every pore; this was a wolf-bite. There was a thread of savagery running through these Jamestown children—hardly one of them but had a mark of this kind upon his arm. But Bing White's meagre arms looked hideously repulsive—like raw flesh almost—so completely was the skin disfigured by his vampire-like amusement. The fading marks were of an ugly unhealthy color, like a livid bruise, the fresh ones fierily encarnadined and inflamed; for Bing pursued this pastime to a perilous pitch.
Another custom indulged in every now and then by the boys and girls in Jamestown was the making of "fox-bites," which meant simply the rubbing with a moistened finger of a spot upon the back of the hand until the skin was worn away and a spot of red flesh left; this was a fox-bite—no cut, burn, or bruise took so long to heal, and in the little schoolhouse there were always some of those hungry-looking sores, attesting the perseverance and fortitude of the sufferers. Rather grewsome pastimes these seem—sprung perhaps from some Indian custom, witnessed by some early settler, described by him to his breathless circle of little ones, by them to be practised in their play and perpetuated in the mysterious manner that makes a meaningless mummery survive as a sacred rite.
Myron Holder's grandmother had been failing during the entire summer. She sank rapidly as the autumn advanced, her strength ebbing as the days shortened. Myron went no more to Mrs. Deans', but stayed at home to wait upon her grandmother. The old woman was a querulous invalid, with no specific disease, only a gradual decline of her vitality. Myron waited upon her untiringly, giving her every possible comfort she could devise out of their scanty means and her scantier knowledge. Bitter as her grandmother's tongue had been, harsh as had been her rule, Myron yet shrunk with a sick feeling of defenselessness from the hour when that tongue would be forever silenced, from the moment when, that rule ceasing, she would be left rudderless.
In these days of autumn quietude, little My grew dearer and dearer to his mother; she caught him to her in the pauses of her work, to kiss him for a moment.
"O soft knees clinging,
O tender treadings of soft feet,
Cheeks warm with little kissings—
O child, child, what have we made each other?"
This was the translation of her heart's mute cry above her boy. Myron Holder, denied the religion of those about her, given no other in its place, founded for herself a new sect, and created for herself a god, and the god was this yellow-haired child, and the worship she accorded him was expressed in every tender tendance of her loving hand. He chattered away to her ceaselessly when he was awake, and the echo of his uncertain tones mingling with her grandmother's bitter words robbed them of their sting.