The day looked forward to so anxiously dawned at last; but in the
dim chamber of Rosalie the light fell sad. I must go alone.
We had always been together before, at work and in play, asleep and
awake, and I lingered long ere I would be persuaded to leave her;
but when she smiled and said the fresh-gathered nuts and shining
apples would make her glad, I wiped her forehead, and turning
quickly away that she might not see my tears, was speedily wading
through winrows of dead leaves.
The sensations of that day I shall never forget; a vague and
trembling fear of some coming evil, I knew not what, made me often
start as the shadows drifted past me, or a bough crackled beneath my
feet.
From the low, shrubby hawthorns, I gathered the small red apples,
and from beneath the maples, picked by their slim golden stems the
notched and gorgeous leaves. The wind fingered playfully my hair,
and clouds of birds went whirring through the tree-tops; but no
sight nor sound could divide my thoughts from her whose voice had so
often filled with music these solitary places.
I remember when first the fear distinctly defined itself. I was
seated on a mossy log, counting the treasures which I had been
gathering, when the clatter of hoof-strokes on the clayey and
hard-beaten road arrested my attention, and, looking up--for the
wood thinned off in the direction of the highway, and left it
distinctly in view--I saw Doctor H----, the physician, in attendance
upon my sick companion.
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