[Illustration: THEY “CRAWL OUT INTO THE FADING LIGHT”]
After the tired horses are unhitched and fed, the exciting gossip is retold at the supper table. A few chores are done, an hour or so is spent around the big lamp, and another eventful day has closed. A week may pass before another trip is made to the sleepy village.
Those who are gone are under the tall grasses and wild flowers on the hill near the woods, beyond the little weather-beaten country church. The iron bell has tolled for them as they were laid away, and now that it is all over, it is the same with them as if they had been monarchs or millionaires.
A touching, if crude, epitaph can be deciphered on one of the gray mossy stones through the crumbling fence. After the name and the final date are the lines,
“Shed not for me the bitter tears Nor fill the heart with vain regrets. ’Tis but the casket that lies here, The gems that filled them sparkles yet.”
and lower, under a pair of clasped hands, “We will meet again,” and it may be that a mighty truth is on the stone.
The road leading from the lake, through the sand hills, and the low stretches of the back country, over to the sleepy village, is broken--and badly broken--by numerous sections of corduroy reinforcements, which have been laid in the marshy places, across small creeks and quagmires. The portion of the road near the lake is seldom traveled. Occasionally, during the hot weather, a wagon-load of people will come over from the sleepy village, and from the little farms along the road, and go into the lake to get cool. They will then spend the rest of the day sweltering on the hot sand to get warm, and return at night.
Beyond the marsh, perhaps half way to the village, is the residence and office of Judge Cassius Blossom, the local Dogberry, the repository of the conflicting interests, and final arbiter in most of the petty dissensions of the sparsely settled country in which he lives.
[Illustration: OLD SETTLERS IN THE BACK COUNTRY]
The “Jedge” was a faithful member of the solemn conclaves of the wise ones with the chin whiskers at the general store in the sleepy village, where he often reversed the decisions of the supreme court. His chair in the charmed circle around the big old-fashioned stove, and among the sawdust cuspidors, in winter, and out on the platform under the awning in summer, was looked upon as the resting-place of about as much legal wisdom, and about as much bad whisky, as one man could comfortably carry around. His dissertations were always anxiously listened to and absorbed by his auditors, each according to his capacity. His opinions and observations were variously interpreted to the home firesides around through the country at night, according to the intellectual limitations of the narrator.