CHAPTER VIII.

HALLOWEEN.


Breakfast was late the next morning. It had been nearly two o'clock
when father had come home. He told us that grandfather was better;
that it was what the doctor called a premonitory attack; that he might
have another and more serious one any day, or that he might live on
for years without a repetition. For the present he was to be kept as
easy and quiet as possible, and gradually allowed to resume his old
habits as his strength permitted.

Mother came back in a few days more; Aunt Radford also was better. The
family fell into the old ways again, and it was as if no change had
threatened. Father told mother, however, something of importance that
grandfather had said to him that afternoon, before he was taken ill.
He had been on the point of showing him something which he looked for
among his papers, just before the wind whirled them out of his hands.
He had almost said he would complete and give it to him at once; and
then, when they were interrupted, he had just put everything up again,
and they had walked over home together. Then there had been the
excitement of the gale, and grandfather had insisted upon going to the
barns himself to see that all was made properly fast, and had come
back all out of breath, and had been taken with that ill turn in the
midst of the storm.

The paper he was going to show to father was an unwitnessed deed of
gift. He had thought of securing to us this home, by giving it in