A WOMAN'S THREAT.
A cow that had been hurt by a falling tree went limping down the road, and Milford, looking at her, said that she pictured the passing of time. And when at evening he saw her again, he said that she was the same hour, passing twice. In the woods he met the girl from the poor-house, and she told him that Mrs. Blakemore was gone. One afternoon Mrs. Stuvic sent for him, and when he went she scolded him for not having come sooner to lighten the dark hour of her loneliness. She was afraid of solitude. In the bustle of a boarding-house, in fault-finding, in all annoyances, there was life, with no time to muse upon the soul's fall of the year; but in the empty rooms, the quiet yard, the hushed piano, there was a mocking stillness, the companion of death. She hated death. It had a cold grip, and old Lewson had proved that there was no breaking away from it. To her it was not generous Nature's humane leveler; it was vicious Nature giving one's enemies an opportunity to exult. She declared that if all her enemies were dead, she would not oppose death. A woman in the neighborhood had sworn that she would drag a dead cat over her grave; she was a spiteful wretch, and she would do it. Years ago there had been a fight over a line fence, and Mrs. Stuvic had won the suit, hence the only proper thing to do was to wait till she was buried and then to drag a dead cat over her grave. A terrible triumph! The old woman shuddered as she spoke of it. She had a premonition that she was to die in the winter, alone, at night, while creaking wagons passed the gate and stiff-jointed dogs bayed the frozen moon. They would cut away the snow and bury her—and then at night would come the woman with the dead cat. She could see it all, the frozen clods, the pine head-board with her name in pencil upon it, the cat left lying there, the woman returning home to gloat in the light of a warm room. Upon a bench on the veranda Milford sat and listened and did not smile, and accepting his grimness as a sympathy, her hard eye grew moist, a flint-stone wet with dew. She asked him if he had an idea as to who that woman was; and when he answered that he did not, she said:
"Nobody but my own sister. Now, you keep still. And that's the reason I was so quick to let you have that farm almost at your own terms. I was afraid some one would rent it for her. Oh, but you may call me unnatural and all that sort of thing, but you don't know what I've had to contend with. My first husband died a drunkard. Many a time I've hauled him home almost frozen. He'd leave me without a bite to eat and spend every cent of money he had. And many a time I told him I'd pour whiskey on him after he was dead—and I did—yes, you bet! I said, 'Now go soak in it throughout eternity.' Ah, Lord, one person don't know how another one lives. I've had nothin' but trouble, trouble—all the time trouble."
"We all have our troubles, madam."
"Hush your mouth. You don't know what troubles are. Think of havin' to fight with your own blood kin, your own children. Think of your own daughter slanderin' you, and your own son havin' you arrested!"
"I expect you've had a pretty hard life, Mrs. Stuvic."
"Hard life! That don't tell half of it."
"And yet you want to stay here longer."
"What! Do you reckon I want to give Nan a chance to drag that cat over my grave?"
"Let her drag it. What's the difference? You won't know anything about it."