The last group of
swimmers had turned into the road from around the clump of willows
at the end of the pasture. The boy that is always the last one had
nearly caught up with the others, for the velvet pat of his bare
feet in the deep dust was slowing. Their eager chatter softened and
softened, until it blended with the sounds of night that verge on
silence, the fall of a leaf, the up-springing of a trodden tuft of
grass, the sleepy twitter of a dreaming bird, and the shrilling of
locusts patiently turning a creaking wheel. I heard the thump of
hoofs and buggy wheels booming in the covered bridge, and a shudder
came upon me that was not all the chill of falling dew. Again I
was a little boy, standing in a circle of my fellows and staring at
something pale, stretched out upon the ground. Ben Snyder had
dived for It and found It and brought It up and laid It on the long,
clean grass. Some one had said we ought to get a barrel and roll
It on the barrel, but there was none there. And then some one said:
"No, it was against the law to touch anything like That before the
Coroner came." So, though we wished that something might be done,
we were glad the law stepped in and stringently forbade us touching
what our flesh crept to think of touching. No longer existed for
us the boy that had the spy-glass and the "Swiss Family Robinson.
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