"The old fool!" Maw was whimpering. "I knew they'd get him. The old fool! I told him not to stay so danged late."
Her eyes were dry and glittering.
After the funeral—Annette and I boasted at school that the Brown murderers had done for Paw although a stroke undoubtedly was responsible—the old cabin never felt quite like home again. First a deluge of uncles, aunts and cousins descended upon us and insisted we sell the farm and move to town.
"Josiah would not have it so," Maw told them while Aunt Ellen nodded corroboration. So they compromised by having a hired hand in to do the plowing and heavier work.
At the start nothing seemed vitally wrong except the absence of Paw's explosive laughter and endless stories, plus a growing dearth of first-class popguns and slingshots. Then, one rainy day when I had been brooding over one of his dog-eared books—"Vanity Fair," I think it was—I looked up, caught sight of Maw, her potato peeling forgotten, sitting tense beside the kitchen table.
I knew what it was that had been bothering me. Maw was still listening ... always listening now. What I did not realize was that, without Paw's quizzical common sense to balance her, she was slipping imperceptibly into that never-never land which had so often beckoned.
Not long after this discovery I awakened, chilled, as the decrepit Seth Thomas clock clinked midnight. The door was open a crack and I could glimpse, by the last flickering embers, Maw's foot in its accustomed place.
"Maw," I called.
"Shhh! Listen! I think I hear a wagon."