The oil was low in the lamp which the lawyer had lighted, and left standing on the table between the windows.  She could see distinctly for a while the stately pieces of old furniture standing in their places against the walls.  Just opposite where she sat was one of lustreless old mahogany, extending the width of the wall between two doors, rearing itself upon slender legs, set with multitudinous drawers, and surmounted by a clock.  A piece of furniture for which she knew no name, an evidence of long-established wealth and old-fashioned luxury, of which she and her plain folk, with their secretaries and desks and bureaus, had known nothing.  The clock had stopped at three o’clock.  Mrs. Field thought to herself that it might have been the hour on which old Mr. Maxwell died, reflecting that souls were more apt to pass away in the wane of the night.  She would have like to wind the clock, and set the hands moving past that ghostly hour, but she did not dare to stir.  She gazed at the large, dull figures sprawling over the old carpet, at the glimmering satiny scrolls on the wall-paper.  On the mantel-shelf stood a branching gilt candlestick, filled with colored candles, and strung around with prisms, which glittered feebly in the low lamp-light.  There was a bulging, sheet-iron wood stove—­the Maxwells had always eschewed coal; beside it lay a little pile of sticks, brought in after the chill of death had come over the house.  There were a few old engravings—­a head of Washington, the Landing of the Pilgrims, the Webster death-bed scene, and one full-length portrait of the old statesman, standing majestically, scroll in hand, in a black frame.

As the oil burned low, the indistinct figures upon the carpet and wall-paper grew more indistinct, the brilliant colors of the prisms turned white, and the fine black and white lights in the death-bed picture ran together.

Finally the lamp went out.  Mrs. Field had spied matches over on the shelf, but she did not dare to rise to cross the room to get them and find another lamp.  She did not dare to stir.

After her light went out, there was still a pale glimmer upon the opposite wall, and the white face of the silent clock showed out above the cumbersome shadow of the great mahogany piece.  The glimmer came from a neighbor’s lamp shining through a gap in the trees.  Soon that also went out, and the old woman sat there in total darkness.

She folded her hands primly, and held up her bonneted head in the darkness, like some decorous and formal caller who might expect at any moment to hear the soft, heavy step of the host upon the creaking stair and his voice in the room.  She sat there so all night.