he considered it finished, having neatly cut upon it
the name, "Chris Kemp," with the date, "October 20th, 1891."

"Couldn't you add a text or motto of some kind?" suggested Dol, glancing
over his shoulder. "Twould make it more like the things one sees in
cemeteries. You're such a dab at that sort of work."

"Can't think of anything," answered the elder brother.

Then, with a sudden lighting of his face, he seized the knife again, and
worked in, in fine lettering, the frightened prayer he had heard on the
half-breed's lips:--

"God, I am weak; pity me!"

Herb and Cyrus lowered the body into its resting-place, and covered it
with the green spruces.

The four campers knelt bare-headed by the grave.

"Couldn't one of you boys say a bit of a prayer?" asked Herb in a thick
voice. "I ain't used to spouting."

All former help had been easily given. This was a harder matter, yet not
so difficult as it would have been amid a city congregation.

Garst tried to recall some suitable prayer from a funeral service; so
did Neal. Both failed.

But here upon Katahdin's side, where, in the large forces of storm and
slide, in forest and granite, through every wind-swept bush, waving
blade, and tinted lichen, breathed a whisper from God, it seemed no
unnatural thing for a man or a boy to speak to his Father.

"Can't one of you fellers say a prayer?" asked Herb again.

Then the river of feeling in Cyrus broke the dam of reserve, and flowed
over his lips in a prayer such as he had never before uttered.

It was the prayer of a son who was for the minute absorbed in his
Father.

It left the five, those who were camping here and one who had gone to
unseen camping-grounds, with son-like trust to the Father's dealings.

Herb and the Farrars responded to it with heart-eager "Amens!" the
fervor of which was new to their lips.

"I thank you as if he were my own brother, boys," said the woodsman,
while he filled in the grave, and planted Neal's cross at its head.
"Sho! when it comes to a time like we've been through to-day, a man, if
he has anything but a gizzard in him, must feel as how we're all
brothers,--every man-jack of us,--white men, red men, half-and-half men,
whatever we are or wherever we sprung."

"A fellow is always hearing that sort of thing," said Neal Farrar to
Cyrus. "But I'm blessed if I ever felt it stick in me before! that we're
all of the one stuff, you know--we and that poor beggar. Some of us
seem to get s