[CHAPTER XLV.]
The twilight hour found Bertram Chesleigh wending his way to the green graveyard where his hapless wife lay buried. As he had hoped, he found the old grave-digger waiting for him.
He had been sodding the mound with velvety green turf, and planting lilies and immortelles upon it.
"Why have you done this?" he said. "Did you not know I would come to-night? I was at death's door last night, or I would have come as I said. Did you do what you promised?"
"Yes, sir, and waited a long time for you," said the man, doffing his cap respectfully. "I even sent my son to look for you. He learned of your bad condition, and then we were compelled to put the coffin back in the ground again."
There was a strange, repressed excitement in the man's manner, but Mr. Chesleigh, absorbed in the bitterness of his own despair, did not observe it.
He counted over a hundred dollars into the man's hand, and then said, with a tremor of hope in his voice:
"I will double the amount if you will do your work over to-night. I must see her. I am mad for one last look at my darling's face!"
The grave-digger shuddered.
"Oh, sir, it is too late," he said. "Have you forgotten how soon death's touch blasts everything human? And the little babe—that was dead long before she was. I know you could not bear to see them now."