Even one old deaf man in the farthest corner of the kitchen looked meaningly at his neighbor.
The service was a long one.

The village hearse and the line of black covered wagons waited in front of the Thayer house over an hour.
There had been another fall of snow the night before, and now the north wind blew it over the country.

Outside ghostly spirals of snow raised from the new drifts heaped along the road-sides like graves, disappeared over the fields, and moved on the borders of distant woods, while in-doors the minister held forth, and the choir sang funeral hymns with a sweet uneven drone of grief and consolation.
When at last the funeral was over and the people came out, they bent their heads before this wild storm which came from the earth instead of the sky.
The cemetery was a mile out of the village; when the procession came driving rapidly home it was nearly sunset, and the thoughts of the people turned from poor Ephraim to their suppers.

It is only for a minute that death can blur life for the living.

Still, when the evening smoke hung over the roofs the people talked untiringly of Ephraim and his mother.
As time went on the dark gossip in the village swelled louder.