Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/67

Rh he died, had been to Reba simply a high shaft of granite. It had never had any special connection with her, until to-day, when with difficulty she slowly approached it over the slippery crust of the snow.

She saw it a long way off, rising lofty and triumphant before her. The severe New England winter had succeeded in obliterating completely most of the other stones, and the few whose tops did appear had a huddled, shrinking look, like sheep in a snowstorm. All but the girl's grandfather's proud shaft of granite, the winter had disregarded. Reba, standing small and wind-blown before it, felt something of her grandfather's indomitable spirit, as she gazed up and saw his name rearing itself up boldly above all the other snow-conquered inscriptions, chiseled clearly against the pale blue of the winter-morning sky. For the first time in her life she felt pride in her inheritance. The vision of her pioneer grandfather had suddenly jostled her out of her smug belief in passive righteousness.

She was all alone in the cemetery—all alone with his monument. Suddenly she pulled off her glove, leaned, and laid her small bare hand against the cold surface of the granite. "His blood running warm right here in my fingers!" she exclaimed to herself, and a second after, the whistle of the distant mills, which her grandfather had put the energy of his red blood into, boomed out the noon hour!

It was as if he spoke to Reba, and she, gazing away off toward the horizon, replied outloudout-loud [sic], "I believe Cousin Pattie's right," and again a moment later, "I believe Cousin Pattie's right!"

It was there in the cemetery, among all the dead people buried underneath the snow, that, out of its