When that music ceased he did not wait any longer nor enter the house, but stole away silently. This time he travelled the main road, which intersected the old one at the Hautville house. The village lights shone before him all the way. He was half-way to the village when he met his cousin, Lot Gordon. He knew he was coming through the pale darkness of the night some time before he was actually in sight by his cough. Lot Gordon had had for years a sharp cough which afflicted him particularly when he walked abroad in night air. It carried as far as the yelp of a dog; when Burr first heard it he stopped short, and looked irresolutely at the thicket beside the road. He had a half-impulse to slink in there among the snowy bushes and hide until his cousin passed by. Then he shook his head angrily and kept on.
MARY E. WILKINS FREEMAN (1852-1930) was born in Randolph, Massachusetts and died in Metuchen, New Jersey. Among her published regional short fiction and novels are A Humble Romance and Other Stories, A New England Nun and Other Stories, Jane Field, and The Portion of Labor. In 1926 she received the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters for distinction in fiction. That same year, she and Edith Wharton were among the first women to be elected to membership in the National Institute of Arts and Letters.