The house itself lay in
a cup of the hill-side, backed with steep woods--so steep that, in
places, anyone who had reasons (good or bad) for doing so, might well
see in at any window he chose. And to Hooper's Farm, down the valley,
was a far cry for help. Meditating on this, 'Lizabeth stepped to the
kitchen window and closed the shutter; then, reaching down an old
horse-pistol from the rack above the mantelshelf, she fetched out powder
and bullet and fell to loading quietly, as one who knew the trick of it.
And yet the sense of danger was not so near as that of loneliness--of a
pervading silence without precedent in her experience, as if its
master's soul in flitting had, whatever Scripture may say, taken
something out of the house with it. 'Lizabeth had known this kitchen
for a score of years now; nevertheless, to-night it was unfamiliar, with
emptier corners and wider intervals of bare floor. She laid down the
loaded pistol, raked the logs together, and set the kettle on the flame.
She would take comfort in a dish of tea.
There was company in the singing of the kettle, the hiss of its overflow
on the embers, and the rattle with which she set out cup, saucer, and
teapot.
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