Every one was out by the windmill,—John, Margaret, Dr. Fred Baker, Grace, Oscar Lutz, Gus Reinmueller. They were standing in a group,—a quiet, silent group,—only standing and doing nothing. Something smote Abbie like a chilling hand, clutching at her heart and throat. There was complete silence in the crowd,—a whispering silence,—the same hushed silence of the time when the baby was born dead. They all turned when she came up the lane road,—turned toward her, but did not move,—looked at her,—and were silent. Abbie got out of the buggy with wooden movements and went over to the group. Dr. Fred Baker was kneeling on the grass. By his side Will lay at the foot of the windmill, staring beyond the Lombardy poplars.

Abbie knelt down by him, too. But he did not look at her. He only lay and looked beyond the Lombardy poplars,—stared up into the deepening prairie twilight.

Oscar Lutz’s voice, hoarse and far away, said: “Is he . . . ?”

Dr. Fred’s, low and far away, also, said: “Yes . . . gone.” He turned his head away and slipped a hand gently over Will’s eyelids.

Gus Reinmueller gave a sob. Oscar Lutz said. “There was a man . . .” The children,—John, Margaret, Isabelle, little Grace,—all began to cry wildly.

Abbie Deal dragged her eyes away from Will and looked across the prairie as toward Golgotha. No one moved. There was no sound but the children crying.

The cows were coming up to the pasture gate. The leaves of the Lombardys floated onto the lane road. A bird flew into the cedars. A long wedge-shaped line of wild geese flew low. Will lay sleeping.

Suddenly, Abbie Deal seemed greater than herself, larger than humanity. A sense of deep wisdom was within her, a flood of infinite strength enveloped her. She rose and threw up her head. “Hush!” she said quietly to the children. Almost sternly she said it: “Hush! Not a child of Will Deal’s is to shed a tear.”

CHAPTER XXII

It is the prerogative of the dramatist to lower the curtain upon a scene and raise it upon a later one,—of the story-teller to close one chapter and begin another when time has passed. Real life is not so. There is no kind interval of time as the settings of the various experiences shift,—no heart-easing period of days between the chapters of life.

Life is Time’s galley-slave, forever shackled to its relentless master. If its hardest blow be dealt at three o’clock, then four o’clock must be met and five and six,—the first dark, agonizing night and the first pale, torturing dawn.

And so it is unreal, even cowardly, to leave Abbie Deal wrestling with her deepest emotions,—living two lives; one within herself, wracked and tortured,—the other, an outward one which met all the old duties and trivial obligations with composure,—leave her in the garden of her Gethsemane, to meet her many months later. Only the children had kept her going. Only her motherhood, whose first characteristic was love and whose second was duty, had kept her hands busy and her head unbowed. These,—and one other thing which she could not explain: the unseen presence of Will himself. She told no one,—made no attempt to discuss the experience with any other. But much of the time Will did not seem to be away. Whether the phenomenon were of the spirit world with the metaphysical involved, a touch of the supernatural which no man understands, or only a comforting memory, she did not know. She accepted the solace in blind faith and with soul-filled gratitude.