Herb and Cyrus lowered the body into its resting-place, and covered it with the green spruces.
The four campers knelt bare-headed by the grave.
“Couldn’t one of you boys say a bit of a prayer?” asked Herb in a thick voice. “I ain’t used to spouting.”
All former help had been easily given. This was a harder matter, yet not so difficult as it would have been amid a city congregation.
Garst tried to recall some suitable prayer from a funeral service; so did Neal. Both failed.
But here upon Katahdin’s side, where, in the large forces of storm and slide, in forest and granite, through every wind-swept bush, waving blade, and tinted lichen, breathed a whisper from God, it seemed no unnatural thing for a man or a boy to speak to his Father.
“Can’t one of you fellers say a prayer?” asked Herb again.
Then the river of feeling in Cyrus broke the dam of reserve, and flowed over his lips in a prayer such as he had never before uttered.
It was the prayer of a son who was for the minute absorbed in his Father.
It left the five, those who were camping here and one who had gone to unseen camping-grounds, with son-like trust to the Father’s dealings.