"Please, Maw." I still struggled between dream and waking. "You'll catch cold out there."
She came partially inside the "door" then and smiled at me. And I noticed, with the lack of surprise which accompanies nightmares, that her teeth were white and firm in the moonglow.
"Shhh!" she admonished. "I think I hear a wagon."
"But Paw is...." I began, then stopped spellbound.
Far in the distance, across rolling hills which lay bathed in beauty and above the fresh staccato mutter of katydids, I too caught the creak of wheels on a gravel road, the jingle of trace chains and the rumble of a half-empty jolt-wagon bed.
I crouched, hardly breathing, until I heard the wagon stop briefly at our sagging gate—we always kept it closed now—heard the rusty hinges squeak and then the friendly thump, thumptey, thump of the wagon as it resumed its progress into the yard.
"It's Uncle Bill, ain't it, Maw?" I pleaded.
"Bill's not due till tomorrow, honey," she answered softly as she shaded her eyes against the moonlight. "No, it's...."
"But it can't be," I sobbed. "He—the angels took him."
"Not Josiah! Angels wouldn't touch him with a ten-foot pole, thank the dear just God," she chuckled. "He'll have a whole raft of packages after all this while." She started forward briskly. "I'll go help pack them in."