Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1914-11-27
GRAFTON of Rules. Was he as old, as


match his eyes and sho which for
some reason he always put on wrong.
SO that the buttons we're ON the inside.
Bruce's baby. Good heavens. 1t had
been a shock when Bruce graduated
from the high school, a shock when he
had married. but his baby. 1t was in
credible that he himself should be So
Did as that.
This meant. then. that if Malcolm
had lived Malcolm might have had q
child now.
Ebenezer had not mean to think
that. 1t was as If the thought anne
and spoke to him. He never allowed
himself to think of that other life of
his. when his wife. Lefty. and his son.
Malcolm. had been living. Nobody in
Old Trail Town ever heard him speak
of them or had ever been answered
when Ebenezer had been spoken to
concerning them. A high white shaft
In the cemetery marked the two graves.
All about them doors had been closed.
But with the thought of this third gen
Grafton the doors all opened. He look
ed along ways that he had forgotten. !
As he went he was unconscious, as
he was always unconscious. of the lit
tie street. He saw the market square.
not as the heart of the town, but as a
place for buying and selling. and the
little shops were to him not ways OF
providing the town with life. but ways
of providing their keepers with a live
Flihood. Beyond these was a familiar
setting. arranged that day with white
background and heaped roofs and laden
boughs, the houses standing side by
side like human beings. There they
were. IKE the chorus to the thing be
was thinking about. They were all
thinking about it too. Every n of
them knew what he knew. Yet be
never saw the bond. but he thought
they were only the places where men
lived who had been his factory hands
and would be so yet If be had not cnt
them away. Ben Torrey. shoyeling of
his front walk with his boy sweeping
behind him: August Muir. giving his
little girl a ride on the snow shovel:
Nettie Hatch. clearing the ice out of
her mail box. while her sister-the
lame one-watched from her chair by
the window interested as in a real
event. Ebenezer spoke to them from
some outposts of consciousness which
his thought did not pass. The little
street was not there. as it was never
there for him as an entity. 1t was
merely a street. And the little town
was not an entity. 1t was merely
where he lived. He went behind Buff
Miles and the snowplow-as he always
went-as if space had been created for
folk to live in one at a time and as
If this were his own turn.
When he reached the bend from the
Old Trail to the road where the fac
tory was he understood at last that he
had been hearing a song sung yer a
great many times:
One for the way 1t all begun.
Two for the way it all has run.
What three'H be for | do forget,
But what's to be has not been yet.
So holly and mistletoe.
So holly and mistletoe.
So holly and mistletoe. !
Over and over and over, oh.
Buff. who was singing 1t, looked over
his shoulder, and nodded.
''They said you can't have no Christ
mas on Christmas day." he observed.
grinning. but | amt heard nothing
to prevent singing Christmas carols
right up to the day that is the day"
Ebenezer halted.
How old are you?" he abruptly de-
manded of ~Buff-whom he had known
from Bluffs boyhood.
'Thirty-three.' said Buff. ''dum It."
"You and Bruce about the same age,
amt your" said Ebenezer.
Buff nodded.
"Well," said Ebenezer. "welI'- and
stood looking at him. Malcolm would
have been his age, too.
Going down to the factory. are
you" Buff said. wait a bit. I'll hike
on down ahead of you"
He turned the snowplow down the
factory road. as if he were making a
triumphal progress. fashioning his
snow borders with all the freedom of
some sculpturing wind on SUMMER
clouds. i
One for the way it all begun.
Two for the way 1t all has run. :
he sang to the soft push and thud and
clank of his going. He swept a circle
in front of the little house that was
the factory office, as II he had prepared
the setting for a great event; and Eben-
ezer. following in the long, bright path.
stepped into the hall of the house.
For thirty years he had been accus-
toned to enter the little house with his
mind ready to receive its interior of
desks and shelves and safes and files.
Today. quite unexpectedly. as he open
ed the door the thing that was in
his mind was a hall stair with a rec
carpet and a parlor adjoining with fig
ured stuff at the windows and a coal
fire in the stove. And thirty-five years
ago it had been that way. when he and
his wife and child had lived in the lit