But he needn't think he can buy Oldfield land, an' set
up a house there, as if 't was all in the day's work. Why, Mary, I
meant to leave that land to you! An' p'raps you won't marry. Nobody
knows. Then, 't would stand in the name a mite longer."
Mary blushed a little, but her eyes never wavered.
"No, gran'ther," said she firmly, "I sha'n't ever marry anybody."
"Well, ye can't tell," responded Nicholas, with a sigh. "Ye can't tell.
He might take your name if he wanted ye enough; but I should call it a
poor tool that would do that."
He sighed again, as he reached for his hat, and Mary and he went out of
the house together, hand in hand. At the gate they parted, and Nicholas
took his way to the schoolhouse, where the town fathers were already
assembled.
Since he passed over it that afternoon, the road had changed,
responsive to twilight and the coming dark. Nicholas knew it in all its
phases, from the dawn of spring, vocal with the peeping of frogs, to
the revery of winter, the silence of snow, and a hopeful glow in the
west. Just here, by the barberry bush at the corner, he had stood still
under the spell of Northern Lights. That was the night when his wife
lay first in Tiverton churchyard; and he remembered, as a part of the
strangeness and wonder of the time, how the north had streamed, and the
neighboring houses had been rosy red.
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