The little group embodied all the stages in life's progression. There was the child, cowering in a world already cold to him. There was the woman, bearing in her countenance the ineffaceable traces of woman's agony. There was the young man, strong in the choice of will and heart; the old man, drawing the last coverlet over the last sleep; and, severed from these by only a short depth of kindred substance, she who had passed, her bed rapidly rounding to a grave.
At last, Clem began patting the mound with the back of his spade; his work was nearly done. Each echoless blow struck upon Myron's heart; and, thinking of the shame she had wrought the dead woman, she dealt herself those blows that she had been accustomed to endure from her grandmother's bitterness.
Homer broke the silence, which seemed deepened instead of lightened by the thud-thud of the spade.
"Come, Myron," he said; "you better go home."
"Yes," she answered, heavily, "I may as well;" and she turned to the footpath that led across the graveyard to the road.
"Not that way," said Homer; "the horses are here."
"The horses!" she said; "the horses! Is your mother waitin' for me?"
"No," he answered, a little grimly. "No, she isn't; but I am, and the horses are."
He recalled the stormy little scene his mother had made but a little while ago: her contemptuous words when he asked her to wait; the scornful and bitter accusation she had flung at him; it had leaped forth from her lips like an arrow held long at the bowstring. It was barbed with all the poison of accumulated suspicion, and winged by the impulse of unreasoning anger, such as springs within mean breasts against hands that succor them; but it had reacted swiftly upon herself, for at the words something came into her son's eyes not good to see—a blending of surprise, indignation, denial, that paled his face, and made it implacable. Before it Mrs. Wilson faltered in her tirade, wavered in her steps, and finally turned and, crossing quickly to where Gamaliel was waiting for his mother, was soon seated with Mrs. Deans in the back seat. Gamaliel backed his horses slowly out of the throng, and they drove away.
The incident had not been unnoticed, but no comment had been made, although meaning looks, of which Homer now knew the interpretation, were exchanged. He had seen some such looks pass between his neighbors of late. A hot, impotent rage filled his heart against the false position in which he was placed, but it did not alter his determination.