“Feel that one with the black spots, Sampson,” she said with the indifference of an abstract deity.  “Is it fat?  And the domineca pullet, and the two roosters we bought from Delphy.”

And when Sampson had seized upon the victims of the fiat she turned to inspect the bunches of fowls offered by neighbouring breeders.

To-day it was Nicholas Burr who stood patiently in the background, three drooping chickens in each hand, their legs tied together with strips of a purple calico which Marthy was making into a dress for Sairy Jane.

Seeing that Miss Chris had delivered her judgments, he came forward and proffered his captives with an abashed demeanour.

“How much are they worth?” asked Miss Chris in her cheerful tones, while Aunt Verbeny gave a suspicious poke beneath one of the flapping wings, followed by a grunt of disparagement.

Nicholas stammered confusedly: 

“Ma says the biggest ought to bring a quarter,” he returned, blushing as Aunt Verbeny grunted again, “and the four smallest can go for twenty cents.”

But when the bargain was concluded he lingered and added shamefacedly:  “Won’t you please let that red-and-black rooster live as long as you can?  I raised it.”

“Why, bless my heart!” exclaimed Miss Chris, “I believe the child is fond of the chicken.”

Eugenia, who was hovering by, burst into tears and declared that the rooster should not die.

“Twenty cents is s-o ch-ea-p for a li-fe,” she sobbed.  “It shan’t be killed, Aunt Chris. It shall go in my hen-h-ou-se.”  And she rushed off to get her little tin bank from the top bureau drawer.

When the arrangements were concluded Nicholas started empty-handed down the box walk, the money jingling in his pocket.  At the end of the long avenue of cedars there was a wide, unploughed common which extended for a quarter of a mile along the roadside.  In spring and summer the ground was white with daisies and in the autumn it donned gorgeous vestments of golden-rod and sumach.  In the centre of the waste, standing alike grim and majestic at all seasons, there was the charred skeleton of a gigantic tree, which had been stripped naked by a bolt of lightning long years ago.  At its foot a prickly clump of briars surrounded the blackened trunk in a decoration of green or red, and from this futile screen the spectral limbs rose boldly and were silhouetted against the far-off horizon like the masts of a wrecked and deserted ship.  A rail fence, where a trumpet-vine hung heavily, divided the field from the road, and several straggling sheep that had strayed from the distant flock stood looking shyly over the massive crimson clusters.

When Nicholas came out from the funereal dusk of the cedars the field was almost blinding in the morning glare, the yellow-centred daisies rolling in the breeze like white-capped billows on a sunlit sea.  From the avenue to his father’s land the road was unbroken by a single shadow—­only to the right, amid the young corn, there was a solitary persimmon tree, and on the left the gigantic wreck stranded amid the tossing daisies.