The decent black-clad village people, with reddening eyes and mouths drooping with melancholy, came in throngs into the snowy yard.

The men in their Sunday gear tiptoed creaking across the floors; the women, feeling for their pocket-handkerchiefs, padded softly and heavily after them, folded in their black shawls like mourning birds.
[Illustration: "The Thayer house was crowded the afternoon of the funeral"] Caleb and Deborah and Barney sat in the north parlor, where Ephraim lay.

Deborah's hoarse laments, which were not like the ordinary hysterical demonstrations of feminine grief, being rather a stern uprising and clamor of herself against her own heart, filled the house.
The minister had to pray and speak against it; scarcely any one beyond the mourners' room could hear his voice.

It was a hard task that the poor young minister had.

He was quite aware of the feeling against Deborah, and it required finesse to avoid jarring that, and yet display the proper amount of Christian sympathy for the afflicted.