Then he ran wildly down the street to escape the infuriated mob which
he believed would pursue him. The knowledge that he was cut off from
the day's festivities made him wince with pain as he ran. Not until
he came out upon the road across the prairie did he stop--breathless,
worn out, crying. During the next two hours the boy wandered on the
prairie and in the woods gathering wild flowers. By the time the
exercises in the Willow Creek opera house were finished and the
procession was formed, Bud Perkins had a heaping armful of field
blossoms. He was coming over the hill to the cemetery when he heard
the band strike up the "Dead March" down in the village. His impulse
was to run away. He checked himself and walked across the place, past
the shafts and monuments, toward his father's grave under the hill
furthest from the town. In the middle of the cemetery the boy stopped.
His eyes were caught by a marble lamb over a child's grave. The
inscription he read was "Mary Pennington, aged two years, three
months, and ten days." The date line upon the stone, told of a year
that had passed before the Perkins boy was born. He gazed at it a
moment, and put there a handful of his choicest flowers. Looking up
he saw some early visitor to the silent place stepping from behind
a monument. Bud had scattered his flowers before he saw that he
was being watched; so he pretended to hunt for stones to throw. He
gathered several, and peppered them at shafts and at birds.

[Illustration: "_Mary Pennington, aged two years, three months, and
ten days_"]

Bud Perkins walked to the freshly-made mound where his father lay, and
scattered his posies over it. The village "cornet band" was coming
nearer and nearer to the hill. The boy curbed a temptation to leave.