“It belongs to her, anyway,” he explained.
Some lines of verse came into my memory, and with a change or two I wrote them as deep as I could with my pencil upon a small board that he smoothed for me.
“Call for the robin redbreast and the wren, Since o'er shady groves they hover, And with flowers and leaves do cover The friendless bodies of unburied men. Call to this funeral dole The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole To rear her hillocks that shall keep her warm.
“That kind o' quaint language reminds me of a play I seen onced in Saynt Paul,” said the Virginian. “About young Prince Henry.”
I told him that another poet was the author.
“They are both good writers,” said the Virginian. And as he was finishing the monument that we had made, young Lin McLean joined us. He was a little ashamed of the feelings that he had shown yesterday, a little anxious to cover those feelings with brass.
“Well,” he said, taking an offish, man-of-the-world tone, “all this fuss just because a woman believed in God.”
“You have put it down wrong,” said the Virginian; “it's just because a man didn't.”