Catherine let her work sink into her lap. An image, that had been for many years as if blotted from her memory, suddenly came before her in pale colors, but very distinct--the image of her dead mother, who, adorned with flowers, lay in her coffin--and she a little girl, ten years old, stood beside it; and her father had come up and taken her hand and said: "We two are now alone."
Her heart was filled with increasing fear. Again taking up her work she tried to sing a song that always occurred to her when everything was so quiet: "Were I a wild Falcon I would soar aloft." But she commenced so gently that she did not complete the first measure. Her voice sounded strange. She was frightened at her own voice.
Perhaps, she thought, it would be better if she went to the barn-yard where in the morning she had passed such happy moments with Lambert.
She arose and hastily walked down the path, at last running, and now with beating heart leaned against the bars of the inclosure. The sheep which stood near ran away frightened, and looked at her from a distance with dull eyes. In the yard all was still. The hens and turkeys had gone out into the fields. As she again turned, from among the fruit trees, in whose blossom-covered branches this morning a robin sang so sweetly, there broke out a brown bird of prey and with broad, flapping wings hastened toward the forest. On the ground among the grass there lay several colored feathers.
More sad than when she went Catherine returned to the house, and again sat down before the door, with the full purpose now to wait quietly, and to fight down her depression of spirits.
So she sat patiently long, endless hours. The light in the green tops of the trees in yonder woods became more golden. The shadows that lay along the edge became deeper and broader--one after another came out of the wilderness until at last they branched out in troops. From time to time flocks of pigeons flew like lightning over the prairie from one side of the forest to the other. High above them, in the bright sky, sailed more slowly chains of wild geese, filling the air with their monotone cry. Then again everything was still, and Catherine could hear the rushing of the blood in her temples.