slept, waked and got down from the old settle where she had spent the night, and walked with unsteady short footsteps toward her grandmother, who caught her quickly and held her fast in her arms.  The little thing looked puzzled, and frowned, and seemed for a moment unhappy, and then the sunshine of her good nature drove away the clouds and she clapped her hands and laughed aloud, while Mrs. Meeker began to cry again at the sight of this unconscious orphan.

“I’m sure I’m glad she can laugh,” said Mrs. Martin.  “She’ll find enough to cry about later on; I foresee she’ll be a great deal o’ company to you, Mis’ Thacher.”

“Though ’t ain’t every one that has the strength to fetch up a child after they reach your years,” said Mrs. Meeker, mournfully.  “It’s anxious work, but I don’t doubt strength will be given you.  I s’pose likely her father’s folks will do a good deal for her,”—­and the three women looked at each other, but neither took it upon herself to answer.

All that day the neighbors and acquaintances came and went in the lane that led to the farm-house.  The brothers Jake and Martin made journeys to and from the village.  At night John Thacher came home from court with as little to say as ever, but, as everybody observed, looking years older.  Young Mrs. Prince’s return and sudden death were the only subjects worth talking about in all the country side, and the doctor had to run the usual gauntlet of questions from all his outlying patients and their families.  Old Mrs. Thacher looked pale and excited, and insisted upon seeing every one who came to the house, with evident intention to play her part in this strange drama with exactness and courtesy.  A funeral in the country is always an era in a family’s life; events date from it and centre in it.  There are so few circumstances that have in the least a public nature that these conspicuous days receive all the more attention.

But while death seems far more astonishing and unnatural in a city, where the great tide of life rises and falls with little apparent regard to the sinking wrecks, in the country it is not so.  The neighbors themselves are those who dig the grave and carry the dead, whom they or their friends have made ready, to the last resting-place.  With all nature looking on,—­the leaves that must fall, and the grass of the field that must wither and be gone when the wind passes over,—­living closer to life and in plainer sight of death, they have a different sense of the mysteries of existence.  They pay homage to Death rather than to the dead; they gather from the lonely farms by scores because there is a funeral, and not because their friend is dead; and the day of Adeline Prince’s burial, the marvelous circumstances, with which the whole town was already familiar, brought a great company together to follow her on her last journey.