It grew darker and darker, the trees creaked and popped in the cold, or groaned like bass viols; and all along the roadside Mr. Jeminy could see the feeble glimmer of fireflies, fallen among the leaves. He said to them, "Little creatures, my flame is also spent. But I do not intend, like you, to lie by the roadside in the wind, and keep myself warm with memories. Now I am going where I can be of use to others. For I am brisk and tough, and do not hope to gain by my efforts more than I deserve."
Thus, following his thoughts, Mr. Jeminy passed, without knowing it, the house where Mrs. Grumble, sitting by the stove, awaited his return. The moon, riding out the wind above his head, peered down at him between the branches, as he stepped from shadow into moonlight, and again into shadow. Under the trees the dry, fallen leaves stirred about his feet, and other leaves, which he could not see, fell near him in the dark. As he passed the little orchard belonging to Mrs. Wicket, he heard the ripe apples dropping in the night.
In the gray of dawn, he found himself approaching a farmhouse somewhere south of Milford, whose lighted lamp, pale yellow in the early twilight, drew him from the road, across the fields. As he turned through the tumbled gate, a woman came to the door, her dress billowing back from her in the breeze.
"Come in, old man," she said.
X
BUT HE IS SOUGHT AFTER ALL
In Mrs. Tomkin's garden the hydrangeas were already pink with frost, and the leaves of the maples, fallen upon the ground, covered the earth with patches of yellow and red. By the side of the road, piles of leaves, raked together by Mr. Tomkins, were set on fire; they burned with a crackle and a roar, and gave off an odor at once pungent and regretful, which mingled in the fresh autumn air with the fragrance of grapes and cider, as the last apples of the season, too old and ripe to keep, went to the press back of the barn.
Juliet liked to play in Mrs. Tomkins' garden, where the hens, each anxious to be not the first, but the second, ran after each other as though to say, "You go and see, and I'll come and look."
Now she sat on the steps of Mrs. Tomkins' porch with her doll Sara, while her mother, Mrs. Wicket, watched at the bedside of Mrs. Grumble, who was very ill. Juliet did not realize how ill she was; she thought Mrs. Grumble might have croup. But Mrs. Ploughman, who sat on the porch with Mrs. Tomkins, knew that Mrs. Grumble had pneumonia. "Got," she explained, "by setting up that night, when Mr. Jeminy never came home."
"No," said Mrs. Tomkins, "he never came home. If it had been me, in Mrs. Grumble's place, I'd have gone to bed, instead of parading around with a lantern all night, catching my death."