Ethan Frome

t the lower end of the wood-lot, an

e sky, the shadows on the rim of the wood-lot were darkly blue, and beyond

Ethan undressed hurriedly and blew out the light so that he should not see her when he took his place at her side. As he lay there he could hear Mattie moving about in her room, and her candle, sending its small ray across the landing, drew a scarcely perceptible line of light under his door. He kept his eyes fixed on the light till it vanished. Then the room grew perfectly black, and not a sound was audible but Zeena's asthmatic breathing. Ethan felt confusedly that ther

d since she had come to Starkfield! He remembered what a colourless slip of a thing she had looked the day he had met her at the station. And all the fi

her. Zeena took the view that Mattie was bound to make the best of Starkfield since she hadn't any other place to

ned only after his impressive funeral. His wife died of the disclosure, and Mattie, at twenty, was left alone to make her way on the fifty dollars obtained from the sale of her piano. For this purpose her equipment, though varied, was inadequate. She could trim a hat, make molasses candy, recite "Curfew shall not ring to-night," and play "The Lost Chord" and a pot-pourri from "Carmen." When she tried to extend the field of her activities in the direction of stenography and book-keeping her health broke down, and six months on her feet behind the counter of a department store did not tend to restore it. Her nearest relations h

of the result. Then the situation grew less strained. The pure air, and the long summer hours in the open, gave back life and elasticity to Mattie, and Zeena, with more leisure to devote to her comp

his sky-line. It was formed of Zeena's obstinate silence, of Mattie's sudden look of warning, of the memory of just such

er, it was really easier for Ethan to send Jotham Powell, the hired man, back to the farm on foot, and drive the load down to the village himself. He had scrambled up on the logs, and wa

s his vague reflection, as he threw to Jotham the unexpecte

her. Instead of her usual calico wrapper and knitted shawl she wore her best dress of brown merino, and above her thin strands of hair, which still preserved the tight undulations of the crimping-pins, rose a har

you going, Zeena

tha Pierce and see that new doctor," she answered in a matter-of-fact tone, as if she had said she was

these expeditions because of their cost. Zeena always came back laden with expensive remedies, and her last visit to Springfield had been commemorated by her paying twenty dollars for an electric battery of which she had never been able to learn the use. But for the moment his sense of reli

oo busy with the hauling I presume you can let Jotham Powell drive

rkfield and Bettsbridge, and the trains which stopped at Corbury Flats were slow and infrequent. A ra

I know is," she continued, "I can't go on the way I am much longer. The pains are clear away down to my ankles now, or I'd 'a' walked in to Starkfield on my own feet, sooner'n put you out, and asked Michael Eady to l

his wife. She sat opposite the window, and the pale light reflected from the banks of snow made her face look more than usually drawn and bloodless, sharpened the three parallel creases between ear

n his mind: the fact that, for the first time since Mattie had come to live with them

m Powell take the lumber to Starkfield, and at first he could not think of a pretext for not doin

rom Hale-but also because he knew from experience the imprudence of letting Zeena think he was in funds on the eve of one of her therapeutic

d said. She had already pushed her plate aside, and was

e it up," she remarked; adding, as she pushed the empty bottle to