nd which would be playful and of a
robin, perched on a near-by fence post, who would not be depressed but
sang away its liquid, throaty warble as though the whole ceremony had
been arranged for its own entertainment. It came quickly to an end.
Mr. Mosby was sent on his way with all due convention and dispatch
with a little of sentimentality thrown in for good measure. A few
moments of grace after the last clods of earth were tossed on and
patted down, and then everyone was hurrying away, back to his
respective niche, cloaking haste with a thin layer of dignity. Mr.
Burrus openly ran after a departing "Ford." It was Mr. Martin's, and
the handy reserve carry-all of the "Golden Rule," and Mr. Burrus
preferred a moment's haste to a long, hot walk at greater leisure. Joe
remembered his face, there in the third row at the end, in the back
parlour. Inscrutable it had seemed--a weazened, yellowing blank mask,
slowly souring in the heat. What had he been thinking on? On the waste
of some lost accounts, perhaps--or even on the amount of credit he
might allow the widow. It might be that he contemplated the remote
results of his own handiwork lying there in the black cloth-covered
box. But if this latter, his face showed no sign. And "Neither Half of
Rome," though it point an accusing finger, would pause for a moment as
it passed him by.

Joe did not go back to the house with the rest of the family. Instead,
he struck out across the fields away from them. He climbed the back
boundary fence and was soon walking up to his knees in grass and
weeds. The air was hot and sticky and heavily charged with a
shimmering white water vapour. There were a few sluggish clouds with
sombre centres hanging about the valley to the southwest, and there
was a drone and zip of flying creatures in swarms above the drying
weeds and stubble. Coming to a large oak tree standing solitary in
that wasting field, he threw himself face downward on the ground in
its shadow, careless that the grass was scant, and that his bed was
scratchy. For a moment he lay in utter relaxation, caring for and
observing nothing. And then, the sharp edge of his fatigue being
broken, he slowly turned on his side and leaned his head on his palm,
his elbow resting on the ground. It was a barren prospect that
stretched out before him: lazy, shiftless land clear over the brow of
the hill that sloped away to the house. The Fawcette place had not
been worked to capacity for years, and t