s
grief. She had directed the making of the coffin and the carving of
the sandstone and had led the funeral hymn to the end; but now she
looked back. Ashes of roses across the sky, creeping phantom shadows,
and in her heart, the sombre presence of the after-desolation which
neither faith nor fortitude casts out. She would go to sleep dull with
the woe of it and dream depressed of its loneliness, to waken heavy
with the memory. Then, by and by, would come the peace that the dead
send, which is not forgetfulness. But now she looked back, looked back
with the wrench that was the tearing of flesh and spirit asunder.
Above the new-made grave, across those topaz sunset gates, stood the
figure of the native woman, shawl thrown from her head reaving the long
black hair; and from the hill crest came such a long low cry as might
have been a ghost echo of all the age-old world sorrows. Eleanor felt
the quick twitch on her arm. Without a word, without a tear, the boy's
mother had fainted.

"We ought to have looked out for that," explained one of the girl
teachers from the school. "We ought to have left Calamity home. She
has always done that since they took her child away."

"Had she a child?" asked Eleanor.

"Yes; and they took it away when she went insane."

Eleanor slept with the leaves of the field-book under her pillow that
night; but she slept the heavy dreamless sleep of baffled hope.

CHAPTER X

THE HANDY MAN GETS BUSY

If you think the Senator had had anything to do with the terrible
events of the Rim Rocks, you are jumping to conclusions and must surely
have failed to follow the activities of Mr. Bat Brydges the morning
after the tragedy.

The first newspaper office that the handy man visited was owned by the
Senator. That was easy. Bat went into the reporters' long room where
the typewriters usually clicked. This morning they were silent. The
men were out on their assignments. The news editor was taking a
message over the telephone. Bat sat down on the table and waited. The
news editor was thin-faced and nervous and alert and immaculately
groomed. Bat was round-faced and sleepy-eyed--tortoise-shell eyes--and
all that prevented his suit from looking positively slovenly was that
his own ample avoirdupois filled every wrinkle.

The news editor adjusted his glasses to his nose and answered, "Yes,
Yes," impatiently over the telephone.

"It's a parson," he explained with an irritable snap of