The occasion was nearly ended by this time:  the borrowed chairs were being set out in the yard in little groups; even the funeral supper had been eaten, and the brothers and sisters and near relatives of the departed man were just going home.  The new grave showed plainly out in the green field near by.  He had belonged to one of the ancient families of the region, long settled on this old farm by the narrow river; they had given their name to a bridge, and the bridge had christened the meeting-house which stood close by.  We were much struck by the solemn figure of the mother, a very old woman, as she walked toward her old home with some of her remaining children.  I had not thought to see her again, knowing her great age and infirmity.  She was like a presence out of the last century, tall and still erect, dark-eyed and of striking features, and a firm look not modern, but as if her mind were still set upon an earlier and simpler scheme of life.  An air of dominion cloaked her finely.  She had long been queen of her surroundings and law-giver to her great family.  Royalty is a quality, one of Nature’s gifts, and there one might behold it as truly as if Victoria Regina Imperatrix had passed by.  The natural instincts common to humanity were there undisguised, unconcealed, simply accepted.  We had seen a royal progress; she was the central figure of that rural society; as you looked at the little group, you could see her only.  Now that she came abroad so rarely, her presence was not without deep significance, and so she took her homeward way with a primitive kind of majesty.

It was evident that the neighborhood was in great excitement and quite thrown out of its usual placidity.  An acquaintance came from a small house farther down the road, and we stopped for a word with him.  We spoke of the funeral, and were told something of the man who had died.  “Yes, and there’s a man layin’ very sick here,” said our friend in an excited whisper. “He won’t last but a day or two.  There’s another man buried yesterday that was struck by lightnin’, comin’ acrost a field when that great shower begun.  The lightnin’ stove through his hat and run down all over him, and ploughed a spot in the ground.”  There was a knot of people about the door; the minister of that scattered parish stood among them, and they all looked at us eagerly, as if we too might be carrying news of a fresh disaster through the countryside.

Somehow the melancholy tales did not touch our sympathies as they ought, and we could not see the pathetic side of them as at another time, the day was so full of cheer and the sky and earth so glorious.  The very fields looked busy with their early summer growth, the horses began to think of the clack of the oat-bin cover, and we were hurried along between the silvery willows and the rustling alders, taking time to gather a handful of stray-away conserve roses by the roadside; and where the highway made a long bend eastward among