Keeler lost no time in descending and transacting his business at the court-house. But after his lonesome walk over the mountains something he saw here appealed to his imagination. It was a human skull, which had belonged to a murderer. The murdered man was a Frenchman, killed for his money. This was Keeler's first visit to Downieville since the crime, and as he had known the Frenchman he determined to visit his grave.
The cemetery is up the river beyond the edge of the town; and here, in more senses than one, a traveler finds the end of the trail. Men and women whose life journey had begun in New England, Old England, Wales, Ireland, France, Denmark, or Russia, had here come to their journey's end.
At the cemetery gate, fastened by a wire, was the quaint sign:
"NOTICE
PLEASE PUT THIS WIRE ON AGIN
TO KEEP IT SHUT."
A beautiful clear mountain stream flows along one side of the ground and pours into the river below. A lone pine chants requiems over the dead; and yellow poppies with red hearts spring out of the graves. Many of the headstones are boards, naturally; and one poor fellow, whose estate at death was probably a minus quantity, is commemorated by a strip of tin with his name pricked into it. There is a fair proportion of pretentious monuments, which were drawn by ten-horse teams from some distant railroad station.
Marked by such a monument was the grave which Keeler sought. The symbolism was striking,—a broken column, an angel holding out an olive branch, and Father Time. And this was the verse of Scripture carved in stone:
"Man walketh in a vain shadow:
he heapeth up riches and cannot
tell who shall gather them."
Forgetting the murdered Frenchman in the forcefulness of the text, Keeler wondered if Robert Palmer's journey, too, would end like this.