ian,--but it was so small a grave! Even Romulus could
have filled it, and, as for Moses, it was hardly too large for his
feet.

For little Wang Tai was dead, and in this small grave were her fragile
bones to rest for twenty-four months under three feet of Christian law.
Interest tempered the fright which Romulus and Moses felt when from the
forward carriage came the sound of rasping oboes, belly-less fiddles,
brazen tom-toms, and harsh cymbals, playing a dirge for little Wang
Tai; playing less for godly protection of her tiny soul than for its
exemption from the torture of devils.

With the others there came forth a little woman all bent with grief and
weeping, for little Wang Tai had a mother, and every mother has a
mother's heart. She was only a little yellow woman from Asia, with
queer wide trousers for skirts and rocker-soled shoes that flapped
against her heels. Her uncovered black hair was firmly knotted and
securely pinned, and her eyes were black of color and soft of look, and
her face, likely blank in content, was wet with tears and drawn with
suffering. And there sat upon her, like a radiance from heaven, the
sweetest, the saddest, the deepest, the tenderest of all human
afflictions,--the one and the only one that time can never heal.

So they interred little Wang Tai, and Romulus and Moses saw it all, and
paper prayers were burned in the oven, and tapers were lighted at the
altar; and for the refreshment of the angels that should come to bear
little Wang Tai's soul to the farther depths of blue heaven some savory
viands were spread upon the grave. The grave filled, the diggers hid
their spades behind the oven, Romulus watching them narrowly. The
little bent woman gathered her grief to her heart and bore it away; and
a cloud of dust, widening away alongside the broken fence, disappeared
in the distance. The dome of Mount Hamilton had changed from copper to
gold; the purple canyons of the Santa Cruz Mountains looked cold
against the blazing orange of the western sky; the crickets set up
their cheerful notes in the great old oak, and night fell softly as a
dream.

Four hungry eyes saw the viands of the grave, and four greedy nostrils
inhaled the aroma. Down dropped Romulus, and with less skill down fell
Moses. Little Wang Tai's angels must go supperless to heaven this
night--and it is a very long road from Christendom to heaven! The two
outlaws snatched, and scrambled, and fought, and when all of this
littl