“Yeh? That’s all right. I’ll pay for it. But she’s paid already.”
“As she lived so she has died, in sin,” the inexorable voice answered. “Let her seek burial elsewhere.”
Mr. Hines leaned forward. His expression and tone were passionless as those of a statistician proffering a tabulation: his words were fit to wring the heart of a stone.
“She’s dead, ain’t she?” he argued gently. “She can’t hurt any one, can she? ‘Specially if they don’t know.”
Bartholomew Storrs made a gesture of repulsion.
“Well, who’ll she hurt?” pursued the other, in his form of pure and abstract reasoning. “Not her mother, I guess. Her mother’s waiting for her; that’s what Min said when she was—was going. And her father’ll be on the other side of her. And that’s all. Min never harmed anybody but herself when she was alive. How’s she going to do ’em any damage now, just lying there, resting? Be reasonable, man!”
Be pitiful, oh, man! For there was a time not so long past when you, with all your stern probity and your unwinking conscience, needed pity; yes, and pleaded for it when the mind was out of control. Think back, Bartholomew Storrs, to the day when you stood by another grave, close to that which waits to-day for the weary sleeper—Bartholomew Storrs rested, opened the door and stood by it, grimly waiting. Mr. Hines turned to me.
“What is this thing, Dominie; a man or a snake? Will I kill it?”
“Bartholomew,” I began. “When we—”
“Not a word from you, Dominie. My mind is made up.”