At Dawn [pp. 347]

1886.] A4t Dazn. 347
thought that the town at the port had been raged around them. And one day, Hiram
laid in ashes, had not warned homeward the Grindle, holding up with an awe-struck face,
absent heir of the Joslin place, of what avail as he rose from a rummage among the ashes,
was his mother's feeble call? a fragment of ivory whiteness, said: "I swan
He never came. For days, until late into to man! That's a human critter's bone!"
the autumn, when the sumachs burned on Then Obadiah Mullet, taking it from him,
the hillside like live coals, and the maples cast his eyes about him, and whispered to
flamed yellowly against the black spruces on his mate: "This is just where the edge of
Orphan Island, the sympathetic neighbors the hay-mow must have been. Supposin'
hunted for the lost Charlie. With chilly that a man had flung himself from that beam
dread of finding him, they dragged the North- on the night of the fire-" but Obadiah did
ern Bay, or they searched the tangled bushes not finish his sentence. The suggestion was
that skirted in dense growths the bluffy too awful.
shores. Wherever a man could have fallen "He was the seventh and the last," said
in a sudden faint or in an unwary moment, Hiram. And a tear glittered in his honest
they looked. eyes.
Even in the ashes of the barn, now re- "Never mind; let's say nothin' about it.
duced to only a heap of almost impalpable Perhaps we are mistaken; there's no tellin'."
powder, did they furtively pursue their quest. So, with a mighty effort, the two men shoulThe uncontrolled fire had licked up every- dered over the tottering wall that bounded
thing so clean, that scarcely a cinder was left the pit, which had been a subway beneath
of the vast and massive frame-work of the the barn, and in which the relics lay in a
barn, that had been built with so much care, heap. The stone-work fell in with a great
and had seen so much sorrow. Here and clatter, and a cloud of dust and ashes rose
there, however, the larger bones of the poor like a column over the wreck. And under
dumb creatures that had perished in the fa- this tumult of masonry now lay forever hidmous fire, were found bleached and half cal- den whatever of mystery remained of the hecined by the fierceness of the heat that had reditary barn.
Noah Brooks
AT DAWN.
NIGHT shadows fly. The air is crisp and sweet
With orange fragrance. Golden apples gird
By _ zehy _ finge. See him winin fleet._,_.