"Don't, sister," he said, gently.

She threw up her hands with a frantic gesture. "SISTER? My God!"
she said; and left him.

* * *


There was no further struggle between them. A week later she went away.
As he told her, "the house was there"--and to that she went until she
should go to find some whirl of life that would make her deaf to voices
of the past.

As for Lewis, he did not see that miserable departure from the
Family House in the shabby old carryall that had been the Shakers'
one vehicle for more than thirty years. He told Nathan he wanted
to mow the burial-ground up on the hill that morning. From that high
and silent spot he could see the long white road up from the settlement
on one side and down to the covered bridge on the other side.
He sat under the pine-tree, his scythe against the stone wall
behind him, his clinched hands between his knees. Sitting thus,
he watched the road and the slow crawl of the shaky old carriage.
. . . After it had passed the burying-ground and was out of sight,
he hid his face in his bent elbow.


It was some ten years afterward that word came to Eldress Hannah
that Athalia Hall was dying and wanted to see her husband;
would he come to her?