The judge started, returning the boy's eager gaze with one of kindly perplexity.
"Bless my soul!" he said again. "You aren't trying to understand that, are you?"
The boy grew scarlet and his lips trembled. "No, sir," he answered. "I'm jest learnin' it now. I'll know what it means when I'm bigger—"
"And you expect to remember it?" asked the judge.
"I don't never forget," said the boy.
"Bless my soul!" exclaimed the judge for the third time.
For a moment he stood looking silently down upon the marble slab with its defaced lettering. Of the wordy epitaph which had once redounded to the honour of the bones beneath there remained only the words "who departed," but he read these with a long abstracted gaze.
"Let me see," he said at last, speaking with his accustomed dignity. "Did you ever go to school, Nicholas?"
"Yes, sir."
"When?"