|LIKE a human machine obeying the laws of habit, Paul went about his usual morning duties, feeding and currying the horses, taking slop to the pigs, driving up the cow from the pasture, and chopping wood for the fire. Amanda came to him at the woodpile, rolling the flakes of dough from her fingers. The first direct rays of the sun were breaking over the brow of the hill. “I'll have the coffee an' biscuits done right off,” she said, in a motherly tone, which seemed to be borrowed from some past memory or the long-worn habit of protecting her sister. “I'll call you purty soon. Paul, you'll have to make the best of it. I've been expectin' it for a long time. He's been gettin' peevish an' losin' flesh an' strength. Then, like most folks in that fix, he let his fancy run rife, an' that hurried him on. It's awful--awful havin' a dead person right here in the house; but it comes to high an' low alike. I know you are cut to the quick, an' inclined to fix the blame on somebody; but that will wear off an' you 'll git reconciled. You'll miss 'im, I know--an' that sharp, for he leaned on you as if you an' 'im had swapped places.” Paul said nothing. He filled his arms with the wood and started into the kitchen. Amanda saw his dull, bloodshot eyes above the heap as he turned. She followed, and as he noiselessly lowered the wood to the stone hearth, she stood over him. “There is a thing that must be attended to,” she said. “I sort o' hate to be left with just me an' Addie alone with him in thar like that; but you'll have' to go to town an' order a coffin. Webb an' Wiggins keeps 'em at the furniture-store, an' in hot weather like this they will want the order early. You just pick out the sort you think we kin afford--they're got all grades--an' they will trim it. If I was you I'd make them send it. It would look more decent than for you to haul it out on the wagon. We'll keep your poor pa till to-morrow; it won't look right to be in too great a hurry; thar is sech a sight o' talk these days about bury in' folks alive, here among the ignorant whites an' blacks.” When he had finished his morning's work Paul came in and sat down at the table to the coffee and eggs and hot cakes his aunt had prepared, but he ate without his usual relish. He was just finishing when Abe Langston, a neighboring farmer, a tall, thin man about forty years of age, with long, brown beard, and without a coat, collar, or necktie, appeared, hat in hand, at the door. “We've just heard it over our way,” he said to Amanda. “I told my wife I'd come over before I set in to cuttin' hay in the bottom. Powerful sudden an' unexpected, wasn't it?” “Yes, he seemed to pass away in his sleep like.” Amanda was wiping her red eyes on her apron. “It was a weak heart, no doubt, an' it is a comfort to feel that he never suffered.”