I did.

“Sacrilege!” I said.  “It is a place for worship.”

“Whose grave is this?” Mr. Axtell asked, as he bent down and laid his hand upon the sod.  It was upon the one next beyond my mother’s; between the two it was that he had placed the cushion.

“The head-stone is just there.  You can read, can you not?” I asked, with a spice of malice, because for the second time this barbaric gentleman had commanded me to obey.

He lifted himself up, leaned against the towering family-monument, and slowly said,—­

“Miss Percival, it is very hard for an Axtell to forgive.”

I thought of the face in the Upper Country, and asked,—­

“Why?”

“Because the Creator has almost deprived them of forgiving power.  Don’t tempt one of them to sin by giving occasion for the exercise of that wherein they mourn at being deficient.”

I pulled dead grassy fibres again, and said nothing.

The second time he bent to the mound of earth, and said,—­

“Please tell me now, Miss Anna, whose grave this is;” and there were tears in his eyes that made them for the moment grandly brown.

“Truly, Mr. Axtell, I do not know.  I’ve been so busy with the living that I’ve not thought much of this place.  It long since all these died, you know;” and I looked about upon the little village closed in by the iron railing.  “I do not know that I can tell you one, save my mother’s, here.  I remember her; the others I cannot.”

I arose to walk around to the headstone and see.

“No,” he said.  “Will you listen to me a little while?”

“If you’ll sing for me.”

“Sing for you?”—­and there was a world of reproach in his meaning.  “Is this a place for songs? or am I a man to sing?”

“Why not, Mr. Axtell?  Aaron told me that you could sing, if you would; he has heard you.”

“I will sing for you,” he said, “if, after I am done, you choose to hear the song I sing.”

I thought again of Miss Lettie, and put the question, once unheeded, concerning her.

“She is better.  Your sister is a charming nurse.”

A long quiet ensued; in it came the memory of Dr. Eaton’s interest in the young girl’s face.

“Is Mr. Axtell an artist?” I asked, after the silence.

“Mr. Axtell is a church-sexton,” was the response.

“Cannot he be both sexton and artist?”

“How can he?”

“You have a strange way of telling me that I ought not to question you,”
I said, vexed at his non-committal words and manner.

He changed the subject widely, when next he spoke.

“Have you the letter that you picked up last night?” he asked.

“Yes, Mr. Axtell.”

“Give it to me, please.”

“Did Miss Lettie commission you to ask?”

“She did not.”

“Then I cannot give it to you.”

“Cannot give me my sister’s letter?”