There was a mixture of disapprobation and grim humor which did not escape Agatha.  She was again beguiled into a smile, though Sallie remained grave as a tombstone.

“Mr. Hand will learn,” said Agatha; and was about to add “Like the rest of us,” but thought better of it.  Sallie took up her tale.

“Mr. Van Camp and his friend came in just after I’d put you to bed, Miss Redmond, and ate a bite of breakfast right offer that table; and ’twas a mercy I’d cleared all the kulch outer the attic, as I did last week, for Mr. Van Camp he wanted a place to sleep; and he’s up there now.  Used to be a whole lot er the parson’s books up there; but I put them on a shelf in the spare room.  The other man went off toward the village.”

Agatha, looking about the pleasant kitchen, was tempted to linger.  Sallie’s conversation yielded, to the discerning, something of the rich essence of the past; and Agatha began to yearn for a better knowledge of the recluse who had been her friend, unknown, through all the years.  But she remembered her industrious plans for the day and postponed her talk with Sallie.

“I remember there used to be a grove, a stretch of wood, somewhere beyond the church, Sallie.  Which way is it—­along the path that goes through the churchyard?”

“No, this way; right back er the yard.  Parson Thayer he used to walk that way quite often.”  Sallie went with Agatha to another stile beyond the churchyard, and pointed over the pasture to a fringe of dark trees along the farther border.  “Right there by that apple tree, the path is.  But don’t go far, Miss Redmond; the woods ain’t healthy.”

“All right, Sallie; thank you.  I’ll not stay long.”  She called Danny and started out through the pasture, with the hound, sober and dignified and happy, at her heels.

The wood was cool and dim, with an uneven wagon road winding in and out between stumps.  Enormous sugar-maples reared their forms here and there; occasionally a lithe birch lifted a tossing head; and, farther within, pines shot their straight trunks, arrow-like, up to the canopy above.

Farther along, the road widened into a little clearing, beyond which the birch and maple trees gave place entirely to pines and hemlocks.  The underbrush disappeared, and a brown carpet of needles and cones spread far under the shade.  The leafy rustle of the deciduous trees ceased, and a majestic stillness, deeper than thought, pervaded the place.  At the clearing just within this deeper wood Agatha paused, sat down on a stone and took Danny’s head in her lap.  The dog looked up into her face with the wistful, melancholy gaze of his kind, inarticulate yet eloquent.