And they kept talking TO Mrs. Foster and AT each other . Mrs. Foster says she really thought she 'd have to keep them all night , for neither would start to go home afore the other . Finally Jim Martin came in to look for his wife , 'cause he thought she must have got stuck in the marsh , and that solved the problem . Master , you ai n't eating anything . Do n't mind my stopping ; I was at it half an hour afore you come , and anyway I 'm in a hurry . My hired boy went home to-day . He heard the rooster crow at twelve last night and he 's gone home to see which of his family is dead . He knows one of 'em is . He heard a rooster crow in the middle of the night onct afore and the next day he got word that his second cousin down at Souris was dead . Mother , if the Master do n't want any more tea , ai n't there some cream for Timothy ? '' CHAPTER V . A PHANTOM OF DELIGHT Shortly before sunset that evening Eric went for a walk . When he did not go to the shore he liked to indulge in long tramps through the Lindsay fields and woods , in the mellowness of `` the sweet ' o the year . '' Most of the Lindsay houses were built along the main road , which ran parallel to the shore , or about the stores at `` The Corner . '' The farms ran back from them into solitudes of woods and pasture lands . Eric struck southwest from the Williamson homestead , in a direction he had not hitherto explored , and walked briskly along , enjoying the witchery of the season all about him in earth and air and sky . He felt it and loved it and yielded to it , as anyone of clean life and sane pulses must do . The spruce wood in which he presently found himself was smitten through with arrows of ruby light from the setting sun . He went through it , walking up a long , purple aisle where the wood-floor was brown and elastic under his feet , and came out beyond it on a scene which surprised him . No house was in sight , but he found himself looking into an orchard ; an old orchard , evidently long neglected and forsaken .
But an orchard dies hard ; and this one , which must have been a very delightful spot once , was delightful still , none the less so XXXXX the air of gentle melancholy which seemed to pervade it , the melancholy which invests all places that have once been the scenes of joy and pleasure and young life , and are so no longer , places where hearts have throbbed , and pulses thrilled , and eyes brightened , and merry voices echoed .
TO about along at before beyond for in into through