Serena looked piteously at the house. Vehicles of various kinds were fastened all along the fence. Still, no solemn voice or sound of singing reached her ear. It had long been the Jeffries custom to hold services over their dead at the house. No feather-bed hung across the garden palings; neither was the hideous cooling-board standing up anywhere, like a wooden tombstone. But the whole neighborhood was there. He must be very low indeed. The youthful widow and her boy alighted, and tied their horse in a humble corner near the woodpile. Nobody came out to receive them. That was another bad sign. She was cramped by her long ride. If her suspense had not been so great she must have felt a pang of shame at the shabby appearance of her son and herself, on this first return from exile. The house dog barked, waking suddenly from his meditations to learn who they were and what they wanted. But he recollected that a great many strangers had been coming and going recently, and considering his duty done, trotted back, and stretched himself to snap flies. Serena felt obliged to go around to the front of the house, though the back doorstep showed the wear of her childish feet. But as she passed the first rosebush, Milty trotting in the white path behind her, a woman came from the back porch, holding a handkerchief over her cap, the ribbons of which flew back on each side of her neck. The light glared on her spectacles. She was as trim and quick as a young girl. Her dress, cape, and apron were of the same material, and her waist was fastened in front with a spiky row of pins. “Serene Heddin’!” she exclaimed, with the spring in her voice which Serena remembered comparing to the clip of a mouse-trap, “you’re not goin’ into the front door to scare your father to death in his last moments.” “Oh, Aunt Lindy,” said the shabby widow, lifting her hands, “is he as bad as that?” “He’s been struck with death all the afternoon. You come in this way.” “Can’t I see him?” asked Mrs. Hedding, climbing over the back doorstone like a suddenly exhausted pilgrim, her face quivering under streams of tears. Through open doors she recognized in the parlor and sitting-room groups of old neighbors, waiting in that hush with which they always accompanied one another to the brink of death. A woman came from among them, whispering,-- “Who’s this, Lindy?” and immediately informing herself: “Why, Sereny Jeffr’s! Have you got here? Come right in to your pap. He’s pretty nigh gone.” “It won’t do no good, Sister McGafferty,” said Aunt Lindy. “He won’t know her, and ’twill disturb him. She was postin’ in at the front door when I caught her,” declared Aunt Lindy, as if speaking of a thief.