Just before sunset, the Daughters of the Mystic Rose passed into the church; they bore tapers to set upon the altar, and at the head and foot of the bier. Two of them remained throughout the night to pray by the chancel rail; one of them was Sister Ste. Croix. Silent, immovable she knelt there throughout the short June night. Her secret remained with her and the one at whose feet she was kneeling.
The little group of special friends from The Gore came last, just a little while before the face they loved was to be covered forever from human gaze: Aileen with her four-months' babe in her arms, Aurora Googe leading little Honoré by the hand, Margaret McCann with her boy, Elvira Caukins and her two daughters. Silent, their tears raining upon the awed and upturned faces of the children, they, too, knelt; but no sound of sobbing profaned the great peaceful silence that was broken only by the faint chip-chip-chipping monotone from Shed Number Two. In that four men were at work. Champney Googe was one of them.
He was expecting them at this appointed time. When he saw them enter the chapel, he put aside hammer and chisel and went across the meadow to join them. He waited for them to come out; then, taking the babe from his wife's arms, he gave her into his mother's keeping. He looked significantly at his wife. The others passed on and out; but Aileen turned and with her husband retraced her steps to the altar. They knelt, hand clasped in hand....
When they rose to look their last upon that loved face, they knew that their lives had received through his spirit the benediction of God.
Champney returned to his work, for time pressed. The quarrymen in The Gore had asked permission the day before to quarry a single stone in which their priest should find his final resting place. Many of them were Italians, and Luigi Poggi was spokesman. Permission being given, he turned to the men:
"For the love of God and the man who stood to us for Him, let us quarry the stone nearest heaven. Look to the ridge yonder; that has not been opened up—who will work with me to open up the highest ridge in The Gore, and quarry the stone to-night."
The volunteers were practically all the men in the Upper and Lower Quarries; the foreman was obliged to draw lots. The men worked in shifts—worked during that entire night; they bared a space of sod; cleared off the surface layer; quarried the rock, using the hand drill entirely. Towards morning the thick granite slab, that lay nearest to the crimsoning sky among the Flamsted Hills, was hoisted from its primeval bed and lowered to its place on the car.
It was then that four men, Champney Googe, Antoine, Jim McCann, and Luigi Poggi asserted their right, by reason of what the dead had been to them, to cut and chisel the rock into sarcophagus shape. Luigi and Antoine asked to cut the cover of the stone coffin.
All Saturday afternoon, the four men in Shed Number Two worked at their work of love, of unspeakable gratitude, of passionate devotion to a sacrificed manhood. They wrought in silence. All that afternoon, they could see, by glancing up from their work and looking out through the shed doors across the field, the silent procession entering and leaving the chapel. Sometimes Jim McCann would strike wild in his feverish haste to ease, by mere physical exertion, his great over-charged heart of its load of grief; a muttered curse on his clumsiness followed. Now and then Champney caught his eye turned upon him half-appealingly; but they spoke no word; chip-chip-chipping, they worked on.