The windows of the sitting-room,
which were usually blank and black by night, were glittering with
unfamiliar light. Like most farmers, he seldom used the room except for
formal company, his wife usually avoiding it, and even he himself now
preferred the dining-room or the kitchen. His first suggestion that his
wife had visitors gave him a sense of pleasure on her account, mingled,
however, with a slight uneasiness of his own which he could not account
for. More than that, as he approached nearer he could hear the swell of
the organ above the roar of the swaying pines, and the cadences were
not of a devotional character. He hesitated for a moment, as he had
hesitated at the fire in the woods; yet it was surely his own house! He
hurried to the door, opened it; not only the light of the sitting-room
streamed into the hall, but the ruddier glow of an actual fire in the
disused grate! The familiar dark furniture had been rearranged to catch
some of the glow and relieve its sombreness.
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