Sure enough, who knows? May it not be to heaven?
"I have heard her play hymns on the organ which I felt must be songs of hope, the words of which promised mercy, for they sounded like it, and she does not play them for amusement; I believe it is her offering for the peace of Allan Dorris, and a prayer could not go farther into heaven than her music. I have known her to go to the church with the little baby, and I should think that when the Lord hears the music, and looks down and sees Annie Dorris and the child, He would forget a great deal when Dorris comes before Him."
Silas had heard the music, too, and he agreed that if it could have been set to words, they would have been "Mercy! Mercy!"
"I am too old a crow to be sentimental," Tug said again, "but I have felt so much better since I have been working and behaving myself that I intend to keep it up, and try and wipe out a part of my former record. If I should go to sleep some night, and not waken in the morning as usual to go away to work, very good; but if I should waken in a strange place, I should like to meet Allan Dorris, and hear him say, 'Tug, I have reason to know that erring men who have ever tried to do right receive a great deal of consideration here; you have done much toward redeeming yourself.'"
Silas was very much surprised to hear his companion talk in this manner, and said something to that effect.
"I am surprised myself," Tug answered, "but the devotion of Annie Dorris to the memory of her husband has set me to thinking. The people believe that Allan Dorris was buried in The Locks' yard, by Thompson Benton, but I know that his iron coffin still stands in the room where you saw it. I think his clay feels grateful for the favor, for it has never been offensive like ordinary flesh. The lid has been shut down never to be opened again, but when I last looked under it, I saw little except what you might find in the road,—dust."
The chill of the evening air reminds them that it is time for little Ben to go in, but the two men remain outside to look at the sunset.
"The people of this town," Mr. Whittle continued, after the boy had disappeared, "are greatly amused over the statement that when an ostrich is pursued, it buries its head in the sand and imagines that it is hid. I tell you that we are a community of ostriches; I occasionally put a head into the sand myself, and so do you and all the rest of them. When little Ben is near me, I try to cause him to forget the years I neglected him, by being kind, but he never looks at me with his mild eyes that I do not fear he is thinking: You only have your head in the sand, and there is so much of you in sight that I remember Quade. Therefore I keep out of his way whenever I can. Do you think his cough is any better?"
"I am afraid not, Tug," Silas replied. "I was thinking to-day that it is growing steadily worse."
Tug looked toward the setting sun and the church, and the solemn tones of the organ came to them; Annie Dorris was playing the hymn the words of which seemed to be "Mercy! Mercy!"