The idea is new to him, and being plausible, he reflects on it, for a time misled. Not long, however; only till remembering what tells him it is fallacious; this, his having set the plant so firmly that no animal could have uprooted it. A sheep or goat might have eaten off the top, but nothing more.
“No, mother!” he at length rejoins; “it han’t been done by eyther; but by a human hand—I ought better to say the claw o’ a human tiger. No, not tiger; more o’ a stinkin’ cat!”
“Ye suspect somebody, then?”
“Suspect! I’m sure, as one can be without seein’, that bit o’ desecrashun ha’ been the work o’ Dick Dempsey. But I mean plantin’ another in its place, an’ watchin’ it too. If he pluck it up, an’ I know it, they’ll need dig another grave in the Rogue’s Ferry buryin’ groun’—that for receivin’ as big a rogue as ever wor buried there, or anywhere else—the d—d scoundrel!”
“Dear Jack! don’t let your passion get the better o’ ye, to speak so sinfully. Richard Dempsey be a bad man, no doubt; but the Lord will deal wi’ him in his own way, an’ sure punish him. So leave him to the Lord. After all, what do it matter—only a bit o’ weed?”
“Weed! Mother, you mistake. That weed, as ye call it, wor like a silken string, bindin’ my heart to Mary’s. Settin’ it in the sod o’ her grave gied me a comfort I can’t describe to ye. An’ now to find it tore up brings the bitter all back again. In the spring I hoped to see it in bloom, to remind me o’ her love as ha’ been blighted, an’ like it lies bleedin’. But—well, it seems as I can’t do nothin’ for her now she’s dead, as I warn’t able while she wor livin’.”
He covers his face with his hands to hide the tears now coursing down his cheeks.
“Oh, my son! don’t take on so. Think that she be happy now—in Heaven. Sure she is, from all I ha’ heerd o’ her.”
“Yes, mother!” he earnestly affirms, “she is. If ever woman went to the good place, she ha’ goed there.”
“Well, that ought to comfort ye.”