She mused over her late vision of retaliation. With what cruelty had she hit upon the mode of showing her revenge! Alas, the lesson had been well taught her, for she had known the averted gaze, the scornful lip, the contemptuous regard. She had simply chosen those means from which she herself had suffered moat keenly. There came back to her the memory of an early morning, when, standing in the doorway, she had looked out into the dawn and had seen
"The horizontal sun Heave his bright shoulders o'er the edge of the world,"
and had vowed herself to the service of others, and to the atonement of her sin, and hoped for an early death.
Here, under the cold rays, of the autumnal sun, and abased before the memory of her late musings, she renewed those vows and scourged her soul with stripes of self-reproach.
When My woke, they went forth from their refuge, across the fields, up the street to the village; the streets were empty. A shambling figure in the distance, bespeaking Clem Humphries by the length of the coat-tails and the thinness of the legs, was making toward the lake. It was indeed Clem, going to indulge in a little surreptitious sport as an antidote to the sermon. Clem looked upon his churchgoing as one of his many professions, like the making of wire snares and the digging of graves. "Only," he said to himself as he reflected upon the matter, "give me a grave to dig for choice."
Homer Wilson passed the church that day just as they were singing that lugubrious paraphrase. He smiled a little to himself, and went on, saying, "Very cheerful that--very; but they haven't anymore idea of returning to dust than I have, at least not for a while." But it seemed he could not get beyond the echo of the singing. The voices followed him far through the rarefied air; there came to him little snatches of the gloomy words, persistently forcing themselves upon him. He quickened his pace, and was soon beyond the farthest-reaching note, and yet it seemed to vibrate in his ears. Once clear of the village, he struck across country.
The sorrel showed red, the ragweed white, between the short stalks of the yellow stubble; here and there in the lanes and by the gateways were spots of bright green verdure, looking unhealthily brilliant among these dull browns and yellows.