“He never knowed.”
“What does it matter?” said Mason gruffly; and, taking up the dead child, he walked towards the hut.
It was a very sad little group that gathered outside Mason’s but next morning. Martin’s wife had been there all the morning cleaning up and doing what she could. One of the women had torn up her husband’s only white shirt for a shroud, and they had made the little body look clean and even beautiful in the wretched little hut.
One after another the fossickers took off their hats and entered, stooping through the low door. Mason sat silently at the foot of the bunk with his head supported by his hand, and watched the men with a strange, abstracted air.
Bob had ransacked the camp in search of some boards for a coffin.
“It will be the last I’ll be able to—why—do for him,” he said.
At last he came to Mrs Martin in despair. That lady took him into the dining-room, and pointed to a large pine table, of which she was very proud.
“Knock that table to pieces,” she said.
Taking off the few things that were lying on it, Bob turned it over and began to knock the top off.
When he had finished the coffin one of the fossicker’s wives said it looked too bare, and she ripped up her black riding-skirt, and made Bob tack the cloth over the coffin.