“There goes John, as true as I live, stalking along just as though the folks warn’t ready to eat him up,” cried Perseverance, making a rush at the door, at which she cried, loudly:
“John! John Bonyton, look here!”
The sagamore turned with a grave slowness, and confronted the speaker in silence. His sister Nancy now joined her, and beckoned him to approach. He lowered the musket which he carried carelessly in the hollow of his arm, showing it to be loaded, and casting the butt upon the ground, it gave out a sharp, significant ring.
“What is your will, wildcats?” he asked.
Unheeding this not very complimentary epithet, Mrs. Higgins entreated him to enter her house.
“Why should I enter your house?”
“Because I am your sister, John, and it shames me to see you living this heathenish life.”
“Then cease to regard me as a brother. Come here, Perseverance.”
In a few minutes the woman was seen moving slowly down the street in company with the tall and taciturn man, who moved toward the rude cemetery, in which were laid the dust to dust of the few of the colony who had passed from the strife of the world into the eternal rest. It was a small inclosure in which the stumps of trees were still visible, and the graves were little more than heaps of sand.
Now and then might be seen a few flowers, and a grave rounded with green turf; but it was a desolate-looking place, serving for nothing but the sad necessities of humanity.