“We're waitin' for the preacher to come.”
The woman looked at the apparently vacant house. The door open. The sun lying on the threshold.
“There's a-plenty to do, till he gits here,” she said. “Somebody's got to dig a grave, an' somebody's got to make a coffin.”
The man leaning against the bar post, who had spoken for the others, now jerked his head toward the meadow'.
“It's dug,” he said.
The woman looked in the direction he indicated; a pile of fresh earth lay heaped up in the meadow', not between the two trees, but below' them, some paces from the summit.
“Well,” said the woman, “you didn't pick out the place I'd a picked; I'd a put it on the ridge between them two trees, that's the natural place for it, there couldn't be no grander place. Who did you think you was savin' that place for? It looks like you was puttin' ole Nicholas so he'd be at the foot of somebody else that you was a-goin' to bury.”
“We didn't pick the place,” said the man.
“Who done it?”
“We don't know who done it, the grave was dug when we got here.”