The next day she went to Mr. Muir's and inquired how much she owed him. He told her, and to his surprise she paid him at once. Then she set out for town, along dreary country roads, betwixt desolate fields, until she came to the outskirts of the straggling town; through these, until she was absorbed in the hurrying throng that crowded the narrow streets.
It was very late when she returned to Jamestown, and as she passed the Deans place she encountered Gamaliel, just returning from some expedition with his bosom friend.
"Hullo, Myron; where've you been?" he asked.
"I've been to town," said Myron, still in those strange, hard tones, and passed on.
There was much speculation as to her errand, which was set at rest when a few days later a wagon entered the little graveyard and the men who came with it proceeded to put up a tiny white tablet at the head of a new-made grave. On it there was carved only one word, and that a short one—MY—a word which in its brevity and meaning was not unsuitable as an inscription over that grave. Myron had spent the last penny of her painful savings in marking the spot where her child lay.
"Let grief be her own mistress still.
She loveth her own anguish deep
More than much pleasure. Let her will
Be done—to weep or not to weep."
So says the humanest of our poets; but such luxurious grieving is for those who fare delicately and live in kings' courts. Myron Holder had her bread to earn—her feet were tied to the treadmill of toil.
So she fared forth on her journey as best she might; and then, and for long after, Jamestown women told how Myron Holder perjured herself with her hand on her dead child's coffin.