“That’s true, I reckon, but I shouldn’t like to live over thar all the same.  They say old Mr. Jonathan comes out of his grave and walks whenever one of ’em is to be buried or married.”

“Nobody’s dead that I’ve heard of, and I don’t suppose either Mr. Jonathan or Miss Kesiah are thinking of getting married.”

“Well, I s’pose so—­but I’m might glad he ain’t taken the notion to walk around here.  I don’t believe in ha’nts, but I ain’t got no use for ’em.”

She went out, closing the door after her; and dropping into a chair by the fire, he buried his face in his hands, while he vowed in his heart that he would stop thinking of Molly.

CHAPTER XIII

BY THE MILL-RACE

A warm, though hazy, sun followed the sharp night, and only the blackened and damaged plants in the yard bore witness to the frost, which had melted to the semblance of rain on the grass.  On the dappled boughs of the sycamore by the mill-race several bronze leaves hung limp and motionless, as if they were attached by silken threads to the stems, and the coating of moss on the revolving wheel shone like green enamel on a groundwork of ebony.  The white mist, which had wrapped the landscape at dawn, still lay in the hollows of the pasture, from which it floated up as the day advanced to dissolve in shining moisture upon the hillside.  There was a keen autumn tang in the air—­a mingling of rotting leaves, of crushed winesaps, of drying sassafras.  As Abel passed from the house to the mill, his gaze rested on a golden hickory tree near the road, where a grey squirrel sported merrily under the branches.  Like most of his neighbours, he had drawn his weather predictions from the habits of the wild creatures, and had decided that it would be an open winter because the squirrels had left the larger part of the nuts ungarnered.

At the door of the mill, as he turned the big rusty key in the lock, he told himself doggedly that since he was not to have Molly, the only sensible thing was to surrender the thought of her.  While he started a blaze in the stove, and swept the floor with the broomsedge broom he kept for the purpose, he forced his mind to dwell on the sacks of grist that stood ready for grinding.  The fox-hound puppy, Moses, had followed him from the house, and sat now over the threshold watching a robin that hopped warily in the band of sunlight.  The robin was in search of a few grains of buckwheat which had dropped from a measure, and the puppy had determined that, although he was unable to eat the buckwheat himself, he would endeavor to prevent the robin from doing so.  So intent was he upon this resolve, that he forgot to bark at an old negro, who drove up presently in an ancient gig, the harness of which was tied on a decrepit mule with pieces of rope.  The negro had left some corn to be ground, and as he took his sack of meal from the miller, he let fall a few lamentations on the general forlorn state of human nature.