The spruces swathed them in blackness and silence. They might have been in their coffins underground. He said to himself: “Perhaps it’ll feel like this . . .” and then again: “After this I sha’n’t feel anything . . .”
Suddenly he heard the old sorrel whinny across the road, and thought: “He’s wondering why he doesn’t get his supper . . .”
“Come!” Mattie whispered, tugging at his hand.
Her sombre violence constrained him: she seemed the embodied instrument of fate. He pulled the sled out, blinking like a night-bird as he passed from the shade of the spruces into the transparent dusk of the open. The slope below them was deserted. All Starkfield was at supper, and not a figure crossed the open space before the church. The sky, swollen with the clouds that announce a thaw, hung as low as b
