ROM the meadow, between the road and the West Woods, came the sweetly shrill note of the meadow-lark and the riotous warblings of bobolink. But these finer voices of the resurrected year fell sadly upon the heart of the boy, heavy with its dreadful burden of secret sin.
Although perching in desperate discomfort on the slippery edge of the oil-cloth cushion, wedged between his parents on the narrow buggy-seat, Ezra was keenly sensible of the spell of the spring, the jubilant gushing of lark and bobolink. Under their magic his being seemed trembling and expanding with life like that which thrilled the hushed earth.
The very mystery of these impressions multiplied their power and intensity—but the grim shadow of his sin could not be dispelled, even by the vernal gladness about him.
At the cross-road from Thompson's Woods to the cheese-factory, the glistening tombstones of the graveyard came into view.
The presence among them of a man standing knee-deep in a grave which he was digging gave the child a keen shock. Death! And on such a morning as this! At all times terrible, its shadow on the peace of this Sabbath morning made him shiver. He counted the shovelfuls of earth the sexton threw upon the slowly growing mound at his side.
How many shovelfuls would it take to empty the grave? Who were they going to put in that black hole? Was it one who had died a Christian? When would they dig his—Ezra Rue's—grave? Was he a Christian? And all the time he counted the shovelfuls of earth! Suddenly it came to him:
"If I don't see him throw out twenty more shovelfuls I shall die this year!"
"One—two—three—four," he counted, denying in each interim the claim of the suggestion, but still counting with tragic earnestness. How slowly the man moved! Oh, if only Totman would get out the twenty shovelfuls! Ezra almost prayed that the old horse would move slower or the sexton faster—but in his soul he felt either to be hopelessly impossible.
"Fourteen—fifteen—sixteen," he continued.
The man rested on his shovel; the boy held his breath. Would he never begin again?
"Seventeen—eighteen!"
A cloud of butterflies arose from a drying puddle; the horse started into a trot, and a corner of the woods shut off the boy's vision of the sexton just as the nineteenth shovelful dropped upon the mound.
Thompson was backing his horse into the shafts of his democrat wagon as
they passed.
"D'y' know Sassman's Will died last night?" he called out in cheerful tones.
After halting for "the particulars," the Rues drove on, discussing with unsparing realism the details of death by this awful contagion, while the child's soul winced under the cumulative terrors which found their visible exponent in the grave-digger. For Death which could invade such a morning as this and lay its majestic silence upon the lips of his noisiest playmate, instead of those of some old man or woman, was more terribly near him than ever before. And he had not seen that twentieth shovelful of grave-dirt fall upon the pile!
He recollected the last time he had seen Will—pitching horseshoes. Now he was in Eternity! The word spelled itself in the child's imagination with letters greater than capitals—something like those the stars might make, on a clear night, if they should all suddenly rush together into the eight great blazing letters!
At the church his mother shook out the front of her skirts, stepped inside the vestibule, lifted Ezra's speckled straw hat, wet her fingers, and plastered back the lock of whitish hair that seemed determined to curl upon his forehead. Then they all went solemnly to the family pew.
Although Ezra had put on the garb of summer, in the form of baggy linen trousers and calico waist, his hair had not yet suffered the inevitable spring "shingle," but strung along down his thin neck like the frayed eaves of a sun-bleached straw thatch. His face was delicately white, save for two bright spots which flushed and faded in his cheeks with the rising and falling tide of his self-consciousness. His long, straight nose, high cheek-bones, and well-rounded chin redeemed from weakness the dreamy expression which large blue eyes and softly curved lips would otherwise have given to his face.
His hands were never at rest. When not fumbling his starched shirt, his long, slender fingers were clutched tensely into his palms.
As Miss Albright, the new teacher, arose behind the organ and began the solo, Ezra for the first moment forgot his sin.