"I guess I'll go," he muttered, and pulling out his watch he entered the cemetery and approached one of the lanterns.
The grave was nearly ready. Captain White, the two Scotchmen, and the pale young man worked by turns, and the soft earth of the hillside was easy to move.
Why didn't they take that girl away? and in nervous irritability he was just turning on his heel when the austere old lady spoke in his ear. "Wait—I wish to speak to you."
He shrugged his wide shoulders. He guessed he could stand it if women could, and he again went outside the iron railing and took his place where no sickly gleam from the lanterns played over the moist grass.
When the men went to take her father from her, the girl's sobs died away. With marvellous composure she kissed his face for the last time. "So thin, so pitifully thin," the detective heard her murmur. "You will rest now, my darling. Good-bye, good-bye," and she crossed his hands and folded them on his breast, then unwinding the silken sash from her waist she wrapped it tenderly around his head.
A knot formed in the detective's throat. And now the old lady was going at it, too. She did not do the affectionate like the girl, but she took a rug that some one had brought her from the house and folded it all around the dead man's body. There was no time to have a coffin made. They must do the best they could. The rug was a costly one. The detective could see the gold threads shining in it. Foreign work probably. She was burying up a poor man's salary with that rogue.
Stay,—they were going to have a burial service. The girl's last lingering caress was over. She had fallen on her knees on the soft earth, and was looking down into the yawning cavity. The men stood around with uncovered heads, while her husband repeated from memory portions of the burial service.
It was a long time since he had been to a funeral,—not since his old father died up in Aroostook County, and the detective drew the back of his hand across his eyes as he listened to the words spoken in a choking voice.
"'If a tree fall toward the south or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth there it shall be.
"'There is hope of a tree if it be cut down, that it shall sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease.... Man's days are as grass, as a flower of the field so he flourisheth.... I am the Resurrection and the Life. He that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. I know that my Redeemer liveth, and though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God'—"