Mote looked in at the window. The neighbors were hurrying to and fro.
Diadema sat with her calico apron up to her face, sobbing; and for the first
morning in thirty years, old Mrs. Bascom's high-backed rocker was empty,
and there was no one sitting in the village watch-tower.


---------------------------------------------------------------


TOM O' THE BLUEB'RY PLAINS.


The sky is a shadowless blue; the noon-day sun glows fiercely;
a cloud of dust rises from the burning road whenever the hot
breeze stirs the air, or whenever a farm wagon creaks along,
its wheels sinking into the deep sand.

In the distance, where the green of the earth joins the blue of the sky,
gleams the silver line of a river.

As far as the eye an reach, the ground is covered
with blueberry bushes; red leaves peeping among green ones;
bloom of blue fruit hanging in full warm clusters,--spheres of
velvet mellowed by summer sun, moistened with crystal dew,
spiced with fragrance of woods.

In among the blueberry bushes grow huckleberries,
"choky pears," and black-snaps.