was partly due to the loss of what is known in New England as the
"L": that long deep-roofed adjunct usually built at right angles to
the main house, and connecting it, by way of storerooms and
tool-house, with the wood-shed and cow-barn. Whether because of its
symbolic sense, the image it presents of a life linked with the
soil, and enclosing in itself the chief sources of warmth and
nourishment, or whether merely because of the consolatory thought
that it enables the dwellers in that harsh climate to get to their
morning's work without facing the weather, it is certain that the
"L" rather than the house itself seems to be the centre, the actual
hearth-stone of the New England farm. Perhaps this connection of
ideas, which had often occurred to me in my rambles about
Starkfield, caused me to hear a wistful note in Frome's words, and
to see in the diminished dwelling the image of his own shrunken
body.

"We're kinder side-tracked here now," he added, "but there was
considerable passing before the railroad was carried through to the
Flats." He roused the lagging bay with another twitch; then, as if
the mere sight of the house had let me too deeply into his
confidence for any farther pretence of reserve, he went on slowly:
"I've always set down the worst of mother's trouble to that. When
she got the rheumatism so bad she couldn't move around she used to
sit up there and watch the road by the hour; and one year, when they
was six months mending the Bettsbridge pike after the floods, and
Harmon Gow had to bring his stage round this way, she picked up so
that she used to get down to the gate most days to see him. But
after the trains begun running nobody ever come by here to speak of,
and mother never could get it through her head what had happened,
and it preyed on her right along till she died."