Preoccupied with these thoughts, she halted suddenly, and with a shock. At her feet, across the little path she had unconsciously followed, stretched an open grave. It was not a fresh excavation, for on the bottom lay a covering of pine-needles. And the rough pile of earth alongside was also covered with them. Projecting into the grave were several roots, feeders sent out by the great trees above; and from the stumps of other 83and larger roots it was evident that he who dug the grave had been driven to use the axe as well as the shovel. Close beside this grave was a mound with a wooden cross at the head.
“There,” she thought, “rests the lady of the miniature–perhaps.” This mound was also covered with pine-needles, as if Nature were helping some one to forget.
The silence of this spot, the murmuring of the wind among the branches high above, all tended to a somewhat mournful revery; and she wondered how this empty grave had been cheated of its tenant. With reverence she gazed upon the primitive wooden cross, evidently put together by inexperienced hands. Then she looked upward, as if to question the voices in the boughs above. But of the empty grave and its companion the whispering pines told nothing.
Approaching footsteps gave no sound in this forest, and she was startled by a cough behind her. It was only Pats, not wishing to startle her by a sudden presence. His face seemed flushed, and even thinner than before; and about his mouth had come a drawn and sensitive look. But her eyes rested coldly upon him as they would rest upon any repugnant object that she despised, but did not fear.
84Smiling with an effort, he said: “Excuse my following you, but it is nearly one o’clock and time for food. I am sure we can find something in that cottage.”
“I am not hungry.”
“Did you have breakfast on the boat?”
“No.”
“Then you must be hungry.”
“I do not care to eat.” And she turned away.