g
up refuse about the kitchen door.

The Sculptor's Funeral

A group of the townspeople stood on the station siding of a little Kansas
town, awaiting the coming of the night train, which was already twenty
minutes overdue. The snow had fallen thick over everything; in the pale
starlight the line of bluffs across the wide, white meadows south of the
town made soft, smoke-coloured curves against the clear sky. The men
on the siding stood first on one foot and then on the other, their hands
thrust deep into their trousers pockets, their overcoats open, their
shoulders screwed up with the cold; and they glanced from time to time
toward the southeast, where the railroad track wound along the river
shore. They conversed in low tones and moved about restlessly,
seeming uncertain as to what was expected of them. There was but one of
the company who looked as if he knew exactly why he was there, and he
kept conspicuously apart; walking to the far end of the platform,
returning to the station door, then pacing up the track again, his chin
sunk in the high collar of his overcoat, his burly shoulders drooping
forward, his gait heavy and dogged. Presently he was approached by a
tall, spare, grizzled man clad in a faded Grand Army suit, who shuffled
out from the group and advanced with a certain deference, craning his
neck forward until his back made the angle of a jack-knife three-quarters
open.

"I reckon she's a-goin' to be pretty late agin to-night, Jim," he
remarked in a squeaky falsetto. "S'pose it's the snow?"

"I don't know," responded the other man with a shade of annoyance,
speaking from out an astonishing cataract of red beard that grew fiercely
and thickly in all directions.

The spare man shifted the quill toothpick he was chewing to the other
side of his mouth. "It ain't likely that anybody from the East will come
with the corpse, I s'pose," he went on reflectively.

"I don't know," responded the other, more curtly than before.

"It's too bad he didn't belong to some lodge or other. I like an order
funeral myself. They seem more appropriate for people of some
repytation," the spare man continued, with an ingratiating concession in
his shrill voice, as he carefully placed his toothpick in his vest
pocket. He always carried the flag at the G.A.R. funerals in the town.

The heavy man turned on his heel, without replying, and walked up the
siding. The spare man rejoined the uneasy group. "Jim's ez full