“It’s nearly over,” said Mrs. Grumble.  “I did what I could.”  Her mind began to wander; she spoke some words to herself.

“You, God,” said Mr. Jeminy aloud, “this is your doing.  Then come and be present; receive the forgiveness of this good woman, to whom you gave, in this life, poverty and sacrifice.”

“Please,” whispered Mrs. Grumble, “speak of God with more respect.”  They were her last words; it was the end.  A spasm of coughing shook her; for a moment she seemed anxious to speak.  But as Mr. Jeminy bent over her, her breath failed; her head fell back, and with a single, frightened glance, Mrs. Grumble passed away, without saying what she had intended.

Mr. Jeminy closed her eyes, and folded her hands across her breast.  “She is gone already,” he thought; “she is far away.  She has pressed ahead, so swiftly, beyond sight or hearing.”

He bent his head.  “You made me comfortable in my life, Mrs. Grumble,” he said, “yet at the end I could do nothing for you.  But you will not think badly of me for that.

“Now you are hurrying through eternity.  To you, these few slow hours before the dawn are no different from to-morrow or yesterday; they will never pass.

“Do you see, at last, the meaning of the spectacle you have just quitted?  Do you understand what I, for all my wisdom, do not understand?  You are free to ask God to explain it to you; you can say, ‘I saw armies with banners, and scholars with their books.’  Perhaps he will tell you the meaning of it.  But for us, who remain, it has no meaning.  Well, we say, this is life.  We laugh, applaud, talk together, and think about ourselves.  And one by one we slip away, no wiser than before.

“We are like the bees, who work from dawn till dark, gathering honey in the fields and in the woods.  But we are not as wise as the bees, for each one grasps what he can, and cries, ‘this is mine.’  Then seeing that it is of no use to him, he adds, ‘What will you give me for it?’”

And he began to think of the past.  It seemed to him that he was in school again.  It was spring; and the children came romping into the schoolroom, their arms full of books and flowers.  Summer passed; he saw Anna Barly crying by the roadside, under the gray sky.  He heard himself saying to Mrs. Grumble:  “Yes, that’s right, stop up your ears . . .”  And he saw himself walking toward Milford in the moonlight, under the falling leaves.  “Who, now,” he thought, “will drive me out of doors because my room is in disorder, or burn, when I am away, the scraps of paper on which I have scribbled my memoranda?”

He bowed his head.  “Rest quietly, Mrs. Grumble,” he said.  “Your troubles are over.  For you there is neither doubt nor grief; life does not matter to you any more.  Nor does it matter very much to me.  For there is no one now to care what I do.  I am no trouble to anybody.”

The chilly breath of morning filled the valley with mist, fine, gray, imperceptible in the faint light of dawn.  And a farmer’s cart, as it rattled down the road, woke, in his chair, the old schoolmaster from the reverie into which he had fallen.