"Ben, let's cut out Mount Vernon, get off and go up to Ninety-sixth Street. I'll go in alone and see if Gabrielle will not meet me this morning. I think she may, if you did not spoil everything by some crazy message."
"Why, Miss Tescheron will be down-town by this time; it is after nine o'clock."
"That's so. I don't suppose any one but her mother would be home." He seemed perfectly satisfied to go with me after that.
It was a dismal ride across the little stretch of country, and when the hack drew up in front of a tall, red building, I looked at my bouquet and then at the driver, asking him if he understood me to call for a brewery, the only object that seemed to lie before us. The man with the reins thereupon directed us to make a detour of the building and its fringe of beer garden, to a point where we would behold the spot we sought. I took Jim's arm and helped him to struggle toward the place. An old man in his shirt-sleeves was digging in a prospective vegetable patch with much lubrication of the horny hands of toil, in which he grasped a potato fork.
"Getting ready to plant?" I asked, my farming blood beginning to rise. "Why don't you use a spade and get somewhere?" There I was, as usual, ready to give advice.
"'Tain't necessary; we don't plant very deep, only 'bout a foot or two; expect we'll have to later on, though, if the business keeps on like it has been goin'. Say, mister, what time is it?" A man who digs for day's wages frequently wants to know the time, so I accommodated him and lost track of the direction of his remarks.
"Can you tell me where I'll find the grave noted on this slip of paper?" I asked, handing Collins' memorandum to him.
"Yes," said he, "that's one of mine. Browning—that's right. I kin show it to you. Step this way."
When he said it was one of his, I took it to mean that he had been the digger for the occasion. So we followed through a little rustic gate—Hamlet Hopkins and Horatio Hosley—into a fenced lot comprising about two acres of level ground, laid out in the smallest graves I had ever seen. Most of them were about the size of my floral tribute. The tiny marble slabs reared above many of the little knolls seemed like foot-stones, and appeared to indicate that the perpendicular system of the Irish pagans had been adopted.
"Here's your'n," said our guide, pointing to a very small exhibit in his peculiar collection. I laid the flowers on it and glanced at the headstone. The simple inscription read: