She passed in review all the small rooms of her son’s home, “strung along the hall like buttons on a string,” and thought of the three flights of stairs which were the only escape from them—­three long, steep flights, which left her breathless, her knees trembling under her great weight, and which led out on the narrow side street, full of noisy, impertinent children and clattering traffic.  Beyond that, nothing—­a city full of strangers whose every thought and way of life were foreign to her, whose very breath came in hurried, feverish gasps, who exhaled, as they passed her, an almost palpable emanation of hostile indifference to her and her existence.  It was no new vision to her.  Ever since the doctor’s verdict had made it impossible longer to resist her son’s dutiful urging of his parents to make his home theirs she had spent scarcely an hour without a sudden sick wave of dread of what lay before her; but the picture was the none the less horrifying because of familiarity, and she struck her hands together with a sharp indrawn breath.

The gaunt old man turned toward her, a helpless sympathy twisting his seamed and weather-marked face.  “It’s too bad, mother,” he said.  “I know just how you feel about it.  But Hiram’s a good son, and”—­he hesitated, casting about for a redeeming feature—­“there’s always the Natural History Museum and the birds.”

“That’s just it, Nathaniel,” returned the old rebel against fate.  “You have something there that’s going on with one thing you’ve done here.  You’ve always noticed birds and studied ’em in the woods, and you can go on doing it in a museum.  But there ain’t a thing for me!  All I’ve ever done is to live right here in this house ever since I was born, and look out at the mountains and the big meadows and the river and the churchyard, and keep house and take care of you and the children.

“Now the children are all gone, and I haven’t the strength to take care of you the way you need; my life is all done—­there ain’t no more to it!

“It’s like a book—­there’s still a chapter you can write, or one you can finish up; but me—­I’ve come right down to Finis, only the Lord won’t write it for me.  It’s as if somebody wanted to scrawl on the back flyleaf something that hasn’t a thing to do with the rest of the book, some scratching stuff in a furrin’ language that I can’t even understand.”

Her husband did not contradict her.  He sighed heavily and they both fell again into a cheerless silence.  The moon rose with a strange, eerie swiftness over the wall of mountain before them, and its wavering reflection sprang at once to life in the swirling waters of the black hole in the Necronsett on the other side of the meadow.  The old woman’s heart gave a painful leap in her breast at the sight.  It was probably one of the last times she would see it.  Numberless occasions when she had noted it before hurried through her mind.