“Was I snoring?”

“Not a bit.  You was sleeping as quiet!  I did hate to have ’em wake you, and I was just goin’ out to shoo them.  They’ve been playin’ something, and that made them laugh.”

“I didn’t know but I had snored,” said the old man, sitting up.

“No,” said his wife.  Then she asked, wistfully, “Was you out at the old place, Jacob?”

“Yes.”

“Did it look natural?”

“Yes; mostly.  They’re sinking the wells down in the woods pasture.”

“And—­the children’s graves?”

“They haven’t touched that part.  But I reckon we got to have ’em moved to the cemetery.  I bought a lot.”

The old woman began softly to weep.  “It does seem too hard that they can’t be let to rest in peace, pore little things.  I wanted you and me to lay there, too, when our time come, Jacob.  Just there, back o’ the beehives and under them shoomakes—­my, I can see the very place!  And I don’t believe I’ll ever feel at home anywheres else.  I woon’t know where I am when the trumpet sounds.  I have to think before I can tell where the east is in New York; and what if I should git faced the wrong way when I raise?  Jacob, I wonder you could sell it!” Her head shook, and the firelight shone on her tears as she searched the folds of her dress for her pocket.

A peal of laughter came from the drawing-room, and then the sound of chords struck on the piano.

“Hush!  Don’t you cry, ’Liz’beth!” said Dryfoos.  “Here; take my handkerchief.  I’ve got a nice lot in the cemetery, and I’m goin’ to have a monument, with two lambs on it—­like the one you always liked so much.  It ain’t the fashion, any more, to have family buryin’ grounds; they’re collectin’ ’em into the cemeteries, all round.”

“I reckon I got to bear it,” said his wife, muffling her face in his handkerchief.  “And I suppose the Lord kin find me, wherever I am.  But I always did want to lay just there.  You mind how we used to go out and set there, after milkin’, and watch the sun go down, and talk about where their angels was, and try to figger it out?”

“I remember, ’Liz’beth.”

The man’s voice in the drawing-room sang a snatch of French song, insolent, mocking, salient; and then Christine’s attempted the same strain, and another cry of laughter from Mela followed.

“Well, I always did expect to lay there.  But I reckon it’s all right.  It won’t be a great while, now, anyway.  Jacob, I don’t believe I’m a-goin’ to live very long.  I know it don’t agree with me here.”

“Oh, I guess it does, ’Liz’beth.  You’re just a little pulled down with the weather.  It’s coming spring, and you feel it; but the doctor says you’re all right.  I stopped in, on the way up, and he says so.”

“I reckon he don’t know everything,” the old woman persisted:  “I’ve been runnin’ down ever since we left Moffitt, and I didn’t feel any too well there, even.  It’s a very strange thing, Jacob, that the richer you git, the less you ain’t able to stay where you want to, dead or alive.”