When he heard the clods fall on
his mother's coffin, heavier and more dismally fell on his heart the
remembrance of his broken promise, which had so dried up the fountains
of her life. Four times had the flowers bloomed above that mother's
grave, and still, for her dear sake, all the memorials of her absent
darling remained as she had liked to have them. The trundle-bed was
never removed, the Indian basket remained under the glass in the
bedroom, where his own little hands had put it, and his chair retained
its place at the table. Out of the family he was nearly forgotten; but
parents now and then continued to frighten truant boys by telling them
of Willie Wharton, who was carried off by Indians and never heard of
after.
The landscape had greatly changed since Mr. Wharton and his
brother-in-law built their cabins in the wilderness. Those cabins were
now sheds and kitchens appended to larger and more commodious dwellings.
A village had grown up around them. On the spire of a new meeting-house
a gilded fish sailed round from north to south, to the great admiration
of children in the opposite schoolhouse. The wild-flowers of the prairie
were supplanted by luxuriant fields of wheat and rye, forever undulating
in wave-like motion, as if Nature loved the rhythm of the sea, and
breathed it to the inland grasses. Neat little Bessie was a married
woman now, and presided over the young Squire's establishment, in a
large white house with green blinds.
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