Distressed, but no longer the prey of distracting doubt, he again examined the inscription before him and this time noticed its peculiarities. Alfred Francesco, only son of Georgian Toritti afterwards Georgian Hazen. Afterwards!  What was meant by that afterwards?  That the woman had been married twice, and that this Alfred Francesco was the son of her first husband rather than of the one whose name he bore?  It looked that way.  There was a suggestion of Italian parentage in the Francesco which corresponded well with the decidedly Italian Toritti.

Perplexed and not altogether satisfied with his discoveries, he turned to leave the place when he found himself in the presence of a man carrying a kit of tools and wearing on his face a harsh and discontented expression.  As this man was middle-aged and had no other protection from the rain than a rubber cape for his shoulders, the cause of his discontent was easy enough to imagine; though why he should come into this place with tools was more than Mr. Ransom could understand.

[Illustration:  “I cut them letters there fifteen years ago.  Now I’m to cut ’em out.”]

“Hello, stranger.”  It was this man who spoke.  “Interested in the Hazen monument, eh?  Well, I’ll soon give you reason to be more interested yet.  Do you see this inscription—­On June 7, 1885; Anitra, aged six, and the rest of it?  Well, I cut them letters there fifteen years ago.  Now I’m to cut ’em out.  The orders has just come.  The youngster didn’t die it seems, and I’m commanded to chip the fifteen-year-old lie out.  What do you think of that?  A sweet job for a day like this.  Mor’n likely it’ll put me under a stone myself.  But folks won’t listen to reason.  It’s been here fifteen years and seventeen days and now it must come out, rain or shine, before night-fall.  ‘Before the sun sets,’ so the telegram ran.  I’ll be blessed but I’ll ask a handsome penny for this job.”

Mr. Ransom, controlling himself with difficulty, pointed to the little mound.  “But the child seems to have been buried here,” he said.

“Lord bless you, yes, a child was buried here, but we all knew years ago that it mightn’t be Hazen’s.  The schoolhouse burned and a dozen children with it.  One of the little bodies was given to Mr. Hazen for burial.  He believed it was his Anitra, but a good while after, a bit of the dress she wore that day was found hanging to a bush where some gipsies had been.  There were lots of folks who remembered that them gipsies had passed the schoolhouse a half hour before the fire, and they now say found the little girl hiding behind the wood-pile, and carried her off.  No one ever knew; but her death was always thought doubtful by every one but Mr. and Mrs. Hazen.  They stuck to the old idee and believed her to be buried under this mound where her name is.”

“But one of the children was buried here,” persisted Ransom.  “You must have known the number of those lost and would surely be able to tell if one were missing, as must have been the case if the gipsies had carried off Anitra before the fire.”