The girl helped the old woman to bed in the kitchen.  Then she went back and sat in the chamber of death.

Outside, the wind hustled the fallen leaves.

CHAPTER V.

At dawn Bates came down the ladder again, and went out quietly.  The new day was fair, and calm; none of his fears were fulfilled.  The dead man might start upon his journey, and Bates knew that the start must be an early one.

He and Saul, taking long-handled oars and poles, went down to the water’s edge, where a big, flat-bottomed boat was lying drawn up on the shore to avoid the autumn storms.  The stones of the beach looked black:  here and there were bits of bright green moss upon them:  both stones and moss had a coating of thin ice that glistened in the morning light.

It was by dint of great exertion that they got the clumsy vessel into the water and fastened her to a small wooden landing.  They used more strength than time in their work.  There was none of that care and skill required in the handling of the scow that a well-built craft would have needed.  When she was afloat and tied, they went up the hill again, and harnessed a yoke of oxen to a rough wooden cart.  Neither did this take them long.  Bates worked with a nervousness that almost amounted to trembling.  He had in his mind the dispute with the girl which he felt sure awaited him.

In this fear also he was destined to be disappointed.  When he went to the inner room the coffin lay as he had left it, ready for its journey, and on the girl’s bed in the corner the thick quilts were heaped as though the sleeper, had tossed restlessly.  But now there was no restlessness; he only saw her night-cap beyond the quills; it seemed that, having perhaps turned her face to the wall to weep, she had at last fallen into exhausted and dreamless slumber.

Bates and Saul carried out the coffin eagerly, quietly.  Even to the callous and shallow mind of Saul it was a relief to escape a contest with an angry woman.  They set the coffin on the cart, and steadied it with a barrel of potash and sacks of buckwheat, which went to make up the load.  By a winding way, where the slope was easiest, they drove the oxen between the trees, using the goad more and their voices as little as might be, till they were a distance from the house.  Some trees had been felled, and cut off close to the ground, so that a cart might pass through the wood; this was the only sign of an artificial road.  The fine powdered snow of the night before had blown away.

When they reached the beach again, the eastern sky, which had been grey, was all dappled with cold pink, and the grey water reflected it somewhat.  There was clearer light on the dark green of the pine-covered hills, and the fine ice coating on stone and weed at the waterside had sharper glints of brilliancy.