The visit was an unseasonable one. She, whom
I loved so, might never come with me to the woods any more.
Where the hill sloped to the roadside, and the trees, as I said,
were but few, was the village graveyard. No friend of mine, no one
whom I had ever known or loved, was buried there--yet with a child's
instinctive dread of death, I had ever passed its shaggy solitude
(for shrubs and trees grew there wild and unattended) with a hurried
step and averted face.
Now, for the first time in my life, I walked voluntarily
thitherward, and climbing on a log by the fence-side, gazed long and
earnestly within. I stood beneath a tall locust-tree, and the small,
round leaves; yellow now as the long cloud-bar across the sunset,
kept dropping, and dropping at my feet, till all the faded grass was
covered up. There the mattock had never been struck; but in fancy I
saw the small Heaves falling and drifting about a new and
smooth-shaped mound--and, choking with the turbulent outcry in my
heart, I glided stealthily homeward--alas! to find the boding shape
I had seen through mists and, shadows awfully palpable. I did not
ask about Rosalie. I was afraid; but with my rural gleanings in my
lap, opened the door of her chamber. The physician had preceded me
but a moment, and, standing by the bedside, was turning toward the
lessening light the little wasted hand, the one on which I had
noticed in the morning a small purple spot.
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