summer haze. The old men who came to the funeral wore their faded
winter overcoats and clumsy caps all ready to be pulled down over
their ears if the wind should change; and their wives were also warmly
wrapped, with great shawls over their rounded, hard-worked shoulders;
yet they took the best warmth and pleasantness into their hearts, and
watched the sad proceedings of the afternoon with deepest interest.
The doctor came hurrying toward home just as the long procession was
going down the pasture, and he saw it crossing a low hill; a dark and
slender column with here and there a child walking beside one of the
elder mourners. The bearers went first with the bier; the track was
uneven, and the procession was lost to sight now and then behind the
slopes. It was forever a mystery; these people might have been a
company of Druid worshipers, or of strange northern priests and their
people, and the doctor checked his impatient horse as he watched the
retreating figures at their simple ceremony. He could not help
thinking what strange ways this child of the old farm had followed,
and what a quiet ending it was to her wandering life. "And I have
promised to look after the little girl," he said to himself as he
drove away up the road.

It was a long walk for the elderly people from the house near the main
highway to the little burying-ground. In the earliest days of the farm
the dwelling-place was nearer the river, which was then the chief
thoroughfare; and those of the family who had died then were buried on
the level bit of upland ground high above the river itself. There was
a wide outlook over the country, and the young pine trees that fringed
the shore sang in the south wind, while some great birds swung to and
fro overhead, watching the water and the strange company of people who
had come so slowly over the land. A flock of sheep had ventured to the
nearest hillock of the next pasture, and stood there fearfully, with