He had seemed to simply stare at life from a sunny place on a stone-wall or a door-step all summer.
When the autumn set in he sat in his old chair by the fire.

Caleb had always felt cold since Deborah died.

When the bell tolled off his years, one morning in November, nobody felt surprised.

People had said to each other for some time that Caleb Thayer was failing.
Barney, after his father died, went back to his own forlorn new house to live, and his sister Rebecca and her husband came to live in the old one.

Rebecca went to meeting now every Sunday, wearing her mother's black shawl and a black ribbon on her bonnet, and sitting in her mother's place in the Thayer pew.