“My mama named the lake, and the valley, and the woods. But now she’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“Yes, and papa says she’s gone to a beautifuler world than this, though it doesn’t seem to me it can be true, and I know just where papa put her in the ground when she died. I was there putting flowers on her grave, and the grave of the Good Stranger, when those bad men grabbed me and carried me away.”
Frank felt a queer thrill.
“The Good Stranger?” he said. “Who was that?”
“Oh, I loved him, and Dick loved him, and we all loved him, for he was so kind. But the fever took him, and he died, too. He is buried near my mama.”
“What was his name?”
“I don’t know. Old Joe called him White Beard, but I just called him uncle.”
“How long ago was it that he died?”
“More than a week, now. Papa buried him, too.”