The Place Called Dagon by Herbert Gorman

Mrs. Slater moved, a black silhouette, across the yellow glow of the kerosene-lamp, bearing in chubby hands the last of the supper dishes. She kicked the kitchen door open with a grunt and disappeared. It was silent in the room. Walden Slater, having removed his boots with the elastic sides, drifted almost surreptitiously to the back porch, his gray woollen socks touching the floor soundlessly. Reaching his haven he sank with a hoarse sigh of relief into the broken rocker. Dreeme could see his bent form against the misty light of evening whenever the door to the kitchen flapped open. He sat there and rocked to the faint creak-creak of the chair; his talon-like hands grasping the arms of the rocker. He was a personification of a certain aspect of this New England. He was the tired man reeking with dried sweat, earth, and barnyard odors sitting in the quiet evening and drawing in hoarse and throbbing lung-fulls of fresh air. His bones were tired. His flesh crawled sluggishly with an old weariness. The hinges of his knees were stiff. He was a finality in himself, a period put to a long sentence of history. The kitchen door swung to and fro and Dreeme ceased to look at the farmer. He looked out of the window instead, into the dark side-yard where the Slater children sat huddled together on a broken barrow and talked soberly in low tones. Their voices sounded thin and far away, pinched sounds, words rolled between huge fists. The low light of the evening fell across the sides of their faces. Small impish profiles turned to the brooding night. A dark form passed between Dreeme's eyes and the children's faces and the young doctor saw the figure of the reverend George Burroughs, skinny hands clasped behind the frayed skirts of his musty coat, stalk off into the darkness. It was like a brief eclipse, an instant's impenetrable blackness, and then it was gone. Light footsteps died almost instantaneously in the direction of the Leeminster Road.

Dreeme looked back into the room. well. he progressed slowly toward the kitchen door.