CHAPTER XI.
A WALLENCAMP FUNERAL.
Mr. 'Lihu Dole—Harvey's father—lay dying, and all the Wallencampers were assembled in and about the house.
It was night, and one was going out from among them to launch his lonely bark on a deeper, more mysterious ocean than that whose moan came up to them from behind the cedars. There was awe on their faces, and a touch of terror, too, but above all there was a strange, childlike wonder.
They had seen death before. It might come to them at any time, they knew. Its spirit sounded in the dirges of the waves along the shore, yet, none the less, for time or fate, or moan of solemn wave, grew this exceeding mystery.
Was it like a cold black flood, to die at night, and no stars shining—a cold flood creeping more and more above the heart? Oh, the wonder on those poor faces, if there might be, indeed, some fairer harbor lights beyond death's tide, and gentler music lulling the dread surge, so that the voyager, with untold joy at last, felt the worn boat-keel loosen on the strand and drift off from this shore!
Emily and Aunt Cinthia were alone in the room with the dying man. They were his sisters. His wife had been dead for years.
In the adjoining room sat a group of females, a single candle burning dimly on a table in their midst. Grandma Bartlett was there, and Grandma Keeler, and Aunt Sibylla Cradlebow.
Occasionally, a whisper from one of these three pierced the gloom, a whisper appropriately sepulchral in tone, but more penetrating than any voice of buoyant life and hope.
I sat in the door with Madeline, Rebecca on the step below, very still and thoughtful.