ed. I soon gathered that they were brothers, that they were
from a small Connecticut village, and that the matter in hand concerned
the cemetery. Said one:

"Now, John, we talked it all over amongst ourselves, and this is what
we've done. You see, everybody was a-movin' from the old buryin'-ground,
and our folks was 'most about left to theirselves, as you may say. They
was crowded, too, as you know; lot wa'n't big enough in the first place;
and last year, when Seth's wife died, we couldn't hardly tuck her in.
She sort o' overlaid Deacon Shorb's lot, and he soured on her, so to
speak, and on the rest of us, too. So we talked it over, and I was for a
lay out in the new simitery on the hill. They wa'n't unwilling, if it
was cheap. Well, the two best and biggest plots was No. 8 and No. 9
--both of a size; nice comfortable room for twenty-six--twenty-six
full-growns, that is; but you reckon in children and other shorts, and
strike an everage, and I should say you might lay in thirty, or maybe
thirty-two or three, pretty genteel--no crowdin' to signify."

"That's a plenty, William. Which one did you buy?"

"Well, I'm a-comin' to that, John. You see, No. 8 was thirteen dollars,
No. 9 fourteen--"

"I see. So's't you took No. 8."

"You wait. I took No. 9. And I'll tell you for why. In the first
place, Deacon Shorb wanted it. Well, after the way he'd gone on about
Seth's wife overlappin' his prem'ses, I'd 'a' beat him out of that No. 9
if I'd 'a' had to stand two dollars extra, let alone one. That's the way
I felt about it. Says I, what's a dollar, anyway? Life's on'y a
pilgrimage, says I; we ain't here for good, and we can't take it with us,
says I. So I just dumped it down, knowin' the Lord don't suffer a good
deed to go for nothin', and cal'latin' to take it out o' somebody in the
course o' trade. Then there was another reason, John. No. 9's a long
way the handiest lot in the simitery, and the likeliest for situation.
It lays right on top of a knoll in the dead center of the buryin' ground;
and you can see Millport from there, and Tracy's, and Hopper Mount, and a
raft o' farms, and so on. There ain't no better outlook from a
buryin'-plot in the state. Si Higgins says so, and I reckon he ought to
know. Well, and that ain't all. 'Course Shorb had to take No. 8; wa'n't
no help for 't. Now, No. 8 jines onto No. 9, but it's on the slope of
the hill, and every time it rains it 'll soak right down onto th