“We can take her home, Andy,” he said. “Bill Blakely told me to tell ye that when you come.”
In the centre of the burying-ground, set back from the roadway and raising its spire heavenward above the tombstones at either side, the church at The Front reposes among the graves. One by one these monuments had been reared, till now they marked a place where a loved one had been taken to rest from each of the families at The Front.
A mound of freshly dug earth, thrown up upon the sod in one corner of the inclosure, told of a newly made grave. A cold November rain had been falling, accompanied by a chilling wind, which came in fitful gusts. The over ripe, deadened stalks of the golden-rod beat against the board fence, rapping at intervals like the weather strips upon a deserted house. The drops of water fell aslant from the eaves of the church roof, and a horse, meagrely covered, shivered beneath the shed at the rear. Bill Blakely had placed in a convenient corner of the shed the pick and shovel he had been using, then backing his horse from under cover, he drove over to the farm at The Nole. Information had spread among the neighbors that Cameron had returned to The Front bringing with him the remains of his wife. No further news were they able to gather, but to Davy Simpson, Angus Ferguson, Bill Blakely and a few others, Cameron had sent a special message, saying that as friends to himself and the departed he wished them to be present at the funeral to take place from The Nole the following afternoon.
Meanwhile Cameron had also dispatched his friend LeClare with Dan as his driver, bearing a note to his lawyer friend up at the county village. To them the import of the note appeared to be nothing more than a request for his friend to attend upon the following day, but later, at the farm, as he saw the lawyer place upon the coffin in the front room a beautiful wreath of the purest white lilies, LeClare knew that Andy’s orders had been telegraphed to the city. The best undertaker the county afforded was in charge of the details, with instructions to slight nothing in the arrangements and the assurance that his bill of expenses would be promptly met.
Cameron greeted his friends by a cordial grasp of the hand. A new dignity of manner impressed itself upon his old neighbors. His bearing at this time was that of a man of a great reserve force, softened through the medium of sorrow. Kindly he thanked the few friends who had come to him, and together upon the arrival of the clergyman they assembled in the front room to fulfill the last request of the departed—that, surrounded by her friends and family, her pastor should offer a prayer, and then in the graveyard by the small church near her home they should lay her at rest.
CHAPTER XVII.
Cameron Outlines His Policy.