McAdams leaned down, his hard hands resting on his clay-slippery overalls, and watched Turner as he printed slowly, beneath the name and date, the words:
Good friend, for Jesus’ sake, forbear
To dig the dust inclosed here;
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And cursed be he that moves my bones.
“It ain’t the kind o’ langwage old Nock Whipple savvied,” commented McAdams soberly. “But I get the idee.”
He extinguished the candle with his heavy palm—thriftily.
“Now give me a hand, here——”
By the time McAdams had shoveled back all the gravel and smoothed the oval surface, Turner had ornately rounded the wooden slab and pointed its end. A few strokes with the back of the shovel and the little monument was driven to its place at the head of the grave underneath the high bank. Alfred Lawrence Turner murmured a brief prayer and dropped a silent tear.
It was barely light when they made up the packs, and McAdams brought in the shivering mules and saddled them. Their four companions trudged, single file, down the meandering stream bed, where five had come.