g as I do, that I care what a few people here or at Ridgeville
think about me?"

Joel rose to his feet. He was wearing his working-clothes. His coarse
shoes and the hat in his gaunt hand were covered with dust from the barn
which he had been cleaning in preparation for the winter's storage of
grain. His rough shirt was open at the neck, the muscles of which were
drawn taut. His brow and hands were beaded with sweat. He stood staring
mountainward for a moment, rocked between two impulses. Presently he
turned to her.

"It would be a question between old-fashioned men of honor," he said,
"whether a gentleman could act as you ask me to act while you are
intrusted to his protection, but you are now speaking of things, Tilly,
which men have no right to decide upon. No bishop, no cardinal should
refuse to go to a woman in distress, and neither should I!--neither
should you. And so, if you feel that it is your duty to the memory of
your husband to do this thing, I shall help you."

"Thank you, Joel." Tilly sobbed aloud. "I knew you would not desert me."

"And when do you want to go?" he inquired.

"In the morning, Joel."

"Then I shall be ready to take you," he said, turning away.

He had to clean and oil the wheels of his road-wagon, and he went to the
barn-yard and set to work.

CHAPTER XLII

There was but scant attendance at the burial of Jane Holder. The men she
had known, and with whom she had laughed, danced, jested, and sung,
under the veil of night, for obvious reasons could not attend in open
daylight such rites, simple and unobtrusive though they were. In like
manner, Jane's female associates were chary about being in evidence.
Moreover, such irresponsible human butterflies are said to have morbid
fears of death, and this particular case was surely nature's grimmest
reminder.

Lizzie Trott went, of course, and Mandy and Jake walked behind her,
solemnly and sedately self-righteous. The spot set aside for Jane's
remains to repose in was in an unused, weed-overgrown corner of the
public cemetery--the spot decided on by the town clerk, who granted the
permit at the price required alike for respected or unrespected
interment. The undertaker's men, in a perfunctory way, did the work of
lowering the flower-covered casket into the damp red clay which was
intermixed with round, prehistoric pebbles. The white sexton of the
cemetery, an old man, bowed and gray, took charge of the filling of the
grave with ea