Each day Uncle Jud went about his chores and his crop-gathering and watched the leaves grow scarlet, then brown, and finally go eddying up and down the valley, or heap themselves into every nook and cranny for final sleep.
Existence had become something like this to him, but he could no longer anticipate a vernal budding forth as the leaves came, but only the sear and autumn for himself, with the small and sadly neglected churchyard at the Corners for its ending.
Snow came and piled itself into fantastic drifts. The stream's summer chatter was hushed. The cows, chickens, and his horse, with wood-cutting, became his sole care. Once a week he journeyed to the Corners for his weekly paper and Mandy's errands, always hoping for a message from Chip. Now and then one came, a little missive in angular chirography, telling how she longed to return to them, which they read and re-read by candlelight.
Somehow this strange wanderer, this unaccounted-for waif, had crept into his life and love as a flower would, and "Pattycake," as he had named her, with her appealing eyes and odd ways, was never out of his thoughts.
And so the winter dragged its slow, chill course. Spring finally unlocked the brook once more, the apple and cherry blossoms came, the robins began nest-building, and one day Uncle Jud returned from the corner with a glad smile on his face.
"Pattycake's school's goin' to close in a couple o' weeks more, 'n' then she's comin' home," he announced, and Aunt Mandy, her face beaming, made haste to wipe her "specs" and read the joyous tidings.
For a few days Uncle Jud acted as if he had forgotten something and knew not where to look for it. He lingered about the house when he would naturally be at work. He peered into one room and then another, in an abstracted way, and finally Aunt Mandy caught him in the keeping room, with one curtain raised,--a thing unheard of,--seated in one of the haircloth chairs and looking around.
"Mandy," he said, as she entered, "do you know, I think them picturs we've had hangin' here nigh on to forty year is homely 'nuff to stop a horse, 'n' they make me feel like I'd been to a funeral. Thar's that 'Death Bed o' Dan'l Webster,' an' 'Death o' Montcalm,' 'specially. I jest can't stand 'em no longer, an' 'The Father o' his Country.' I'm gittin' tired o' that, 'n' the smirk he's got on his face. I feel jest as though I'd like to throw a stun at him this minute. You may feel sot on them picturs, but I'd like to chuck the hull kit 'n' boodle into the cow shed. An' them winder curtains," he continued, looking around, "things so blue they make me shiver, an' this carpet with the figgers o' green and yaller birds, it sorter stuns me.