It was the odd idea about the world growing "yellow-lookin'"--sometimes he said "red-lookin'" and at other times seemed not quite certain which description conveyed the vague hue of his fancy--that appeared to be pulling him to pieces, undermining him, more than any other influence. Most people, however, were accustomed to consider the hallucination an effect of Mother Dalton's removal and a presage of Old Dalton's own passing.
This odd yellowness (or redness), as of grass over which chaff from the threshing-mill has blown, lay across the old pasture on this afternoon of his second century, as Old Dalton went to water the superannuated black horse that whinnied at his approach.
"Ey, Charley," he said, reflectively, as he took the old beast by the forelock to lead it up to the pump--"ey, Charley-boy"; then, as the horse, diminishing the space between its forefoot and his heel with a strange ease, almost trod on him--"ey, boy--steady there, now. Es yur spavin not throublin' ye th' day, then? Ye walk that free. S-steady, boy--ey!"
But Grace, the granddaughter, glancing across the pasture as she came to the kitchen door to empty potato peelings, put it differently.
"See how hard it be's gettin' for grampa to get along, Jim," she said to her husband, who sat mending a binder-canvas at the granary door. "I never noticed it before, but that old lame Charley horse can keep right up to him now."
Jim Nixon stuck his jack-knife into the step beside him, pushed a rivet through canvas and fastening-strap, and remarked, casually: "He ought to lay off now--too old to be chorin' around. Young Bill could do all the work he's doin', after he comes home from school, evenings."
"He's not bin the same sence gramma died," Gracie Nixon observed, turning indoors again. "It ain't likely we'll have him with us long now, Jim."
The old man, coming into the house a little haltingly that evening, stopped sharply as his granddaughter, with a discomposingly intent look, asked, "Tired to-night, grampa?"
"Ey?" His mouth worked, and his eyes, the pupils standing aggressively and stonily in the center of the whites, abetted the protest of the indomitable old pioneer. "Tired nothin'. You young ones wants t'l maind yur own business, an' that'll--egh--kape yous busy. Where's me pipe, d'ye hear, ey? An' the 'bacca? Yagh, that's it." The old man's fingers crooked eagerly around the musty bowl. He lit, sucked, and puffed noisily, lowering himself on a bench and feeling for the window-sill with his elbow. "In my taime," he continued, presently, in an aggrieved tone, "young ones was whopped fur talkin' up t'l thur elders like that. Lave me be, now, an' go 'n' milk thame cows I just fetched. Poor beasts, their bags es that full--ey, that full. They're blattin' to be eased."