The corn was not yet shelled, and Caleb arranged his baskets in the chimney-corner, and fell to again.  Ephraim began teasing his mother to let him crack some nuts, but she silenced him peremptorily.  “Set down an’ help your father shell that corn,” said she.  And Ephraim pulled a grating chair up to his father, muttering cautiously.

Caleb kept looking at Deborah anxiously.  He glanced at the door frequently.

“Where’s Rebecca?” he asked at last.

“I dunno,” replied Deborah.

“Has she laid down?”

“No, she ain’t.”

“She ain’t gone out in the snow, has she?” Caleb said, with deploring anxiety.

Deborah answered not a word.  She pursed her lips and knitted.

“She ain’t, has she, mother?”

“Keep on with your corn,” said Deborah; and that was all she would say.

Presently she arose and prepared dinner in the same dogged silence. 
Caleb, and even Ephraim, watched her furtively, with alarmed eyes.

When Rebecca did not appear at the dinner-table Caleb did not say anything about it, but his old face was quite pale.  He ate his dinner from the force of habit of over seventy years, during which time he had always eaten his dinner, but he did not taste it consciously.

He made up his mind that as soon as he got up from the table he would go over to Barney’s and consult him.  After he pushed his chair away he was slipping out shyly, but Deborah stopped him.

“Set down an’ finish that corn.  I don’t want it clutterin’ up the kitchen any longer,” said she.

“I thought I’d jest slip out a minute, mother.”

Deborah motioned him towards the chimney-corner and the baskets of corn with a stern gesture, and Caleb obeyed.  Ephraim, too, settled down beside his father, and fell to shelling corn without being told.  He was quite cowed and intimidated by this strange mood of his mother’s, and involuntarily shrank closer to his father when she passed near him.

Caleb and Ephraim both watched Deborah with furtive terror, as she moved about, washing and putting away the dinner-dishes and sweeping the kitchen.

They looked at each other, when, after the after-dinner housework was all done, she took her shawl and hood from the peg, and drew some old wool socks of Caleb’s over her shoes.  She went out without saying a word.  Ephraim waited a few minutes after the door shut behind her; then he ran to the window.

“She’s gone to Barney’s,” he announced, rolling great eyes over his shoulder at his father; and the old man also went over to the window and watched Deborah plodding through the snow up the street.

It was not snowing so hard now, and the clouds were breaking, but a bitter wind was blowing from the northwest.  It drove Deborah along before it, lashing her skirts around her gaunt limbs; but she leaned back upon it, and did not bend.

The road was not broken out, and the snow was quite deep, but she went along with no break in her gait.  She went into Barney’s yard and knocked at his door.  She set her mouth harder when she heard him coming.