Jerry’s long, lean figure, with the company of his longer and leaner shadow which dogged his steps like some pursuing phantom of sorrow or dismay that might materialize in the fullness of time, kept steadily down the road. He made no pretense of silence or concealment, but whistled blithely and loud—a sound to pierce the pensive hour with discordant interruption. Did it awaken the birds? A peevish, intermittent chirring rose drowsily from the woods, and then was still, and anon sounded again. Or was it that the dawn was coming hardily upon the slowly departing night, long lingering, loath to go? The moon showed no paling sign; belts of pearly vapors, catching its light, were rising from the furthest reaches of the purple mountains. And here the river was dark and deep; and there it flowed in translucent amber waves, with a silver flash of foam, all the brighter for the shadow of the rock hard by. And now it was out of sight and there were the long stretches of the familiar woods on either hand, with no suggestion of the vivid tints of autumn, only a dusky black alternating with a gleaming gold strewn like the largess of a dream fantasy all a-down the winding ways. Morning surely; the thrush sings a stave. And silence again. The shadows falter, though the pensive lunar light yet lingers. And again the thrush—fresh, thrilling, a quiver of ecstasies, a soaring wing, though it catches the yellow moonbeams. The sky reddens. Alas, for the waning moon! Oh, sorry ghost; how pale! how pale! For the prosaic day is in the awakening woods. The mountains rise above their encompassing mists and shadows. Beneath them, brown and gray, with closed batten shutters, Ike sees, slowly revealed, his father’s house, the sheep lying huddled at one side, barely astir—a head lifted now, and then dropped—the cow drowsing in a fence corner; the chickens beginning to jump down from the althea bushes, where, despite the autumnal chill, they still roost. And, as the first slanting sun ray shoots up over the mountains, the door opens, and there is thrust out the pink face of Rosamond, dimpling with glee at the sight of them, and her shout of glad recognition is loud enough to waken all the sluggards in the cabin, or for that matter in the Cove. The cabin, however, was already astir. Ike learned, with emotions not altogether relating to the recital, that his father’s aunt who had brought him up from infancy had been taken ill, and a runner having been sent to apprise him he had gone over to the Carolina side, and would not return until the old woman should be better or the worst over.