of her, but Freda was not to be
pumped. She was a quiet little mite, with big, wistful dark eyes that
had a disconcerting fashion of looking the gossips out of countenance.
But if Freda had been disposed to complain, the North Point people
would have found out that they had been only too correct in their
predictions.

"Mrs. Wilson," Freda said timidly that night, "why haven't we got a
grave?"

Mrs. Wilson averred that such a question gave her the "creeps."

"You ought to be very thankful that we haven't," she said severely.
"That Graveyard Day is a heathenish custom, anyhow. They make a
regular picnic of it, and it makes me sick to hear those school girls
chattering about what they mean to plant, each one trying to outblow
the other. If I _had_ a grave there, I wouldn't make a flower garden
of it!"

Freda did not go to the graveyard the next day, although it was a
holiday. But in the evening, when everybody had gone home, she crept
over the hill and through the beech grove to see what had been done.
The plots were all very neat and prettily set out with plants and
bulbs. Some perennials were already in bud. The grave of Katie Morris'
great-uncle, who had been dead for forty years, was covered with
blossoming purple pansies. Every grave, no matter how small or old,
had its share of promise--every grave except one. Freda came across it
with a feeling of surprise. It was away down in the lower corner where
there were no plots. It was shut off from the others by a growth of
young poplars and was sunken and overgrown with blueberry shrubs.
There was no headstone, and it looked dismally neglected. Freda felt a
sympathy for it. She had no grave, and this grave had nobody to tend
it or care for it.

When she went home she asked Mrs. Wilson whose it was.

"Humph!" said Mrs. Wilson. "If you have so much spare time lying round
loose, you'd better put it into your sewing instead of prowling about
graveyards. Do you expect me to work my fingers to the bone making
clothes for you? I wish I'd left you in the asylum. That grave is
Jordan Slade's, I suppose. He died twenty years ago, and a worthless,
drunken scamp he was. He served a term in the penitentiary for
breaking into Andrew Messervey's store, and after it he had the face
to come back to North Point. But respectable people would have nothing
to do with him, and he went to the dogs altogether--had to be buried
on charity when he died. He hasn't any relations here. There