The heart of six is full of mystery. All that first morning, with a
piteous earnestness, a piteous heartlessness, Hope Carolina played
funeral in the front yard, in the place where the stone fort had once
been and where the peach-pits were now planted. Every now and then she
would stop patting the little mounds of earth--mounds of earth covered
with sweet flowers, in a place as beautiful as any garden, were the
chief thing in her idea of funerals--and, standing tiptoe, she would
stare over the paling fence, hoping the Radical Judge would come by.
At last, late in the forenoon, her dogged vigilance was rewarded; and
in a moment, bonnetless, an untidy midget in low-necked pink calico
which even had a hole behind--there she was out of the gate, following
closely at his heels. She couldn't tell exactly why she followed him;
she only knew she wanted to--perhaps to see if he thought, too, as
everybody said, that the little crippled Grace was better off up in
the sky. She fancied maybe he didn't, he was so different,
somehow--not like the old, fierce Radical Judge at all. And when
really nice white gentlemen--_Democrats_, who had never noticed him
before--stood respectfully aside with _their_ beaver hats off, he
walked still down the middle of the dirt sidewalk, and did not seem to
see them at all.

[Illustration: "IT WAS THE QUAINT CUSTOM AT FUNERALS IN FAIRVILLE TO
FOLLOW MOURNERS IN LINE FROM THE GRAVE"]

Once when her brass-toed shoe kicked his heel by the railroad,--along
which, the littlest distance away, was the historic spot where Uncle
John had got the bullet,--she said "Thank you" aloud.

She meant it for the peaches, for she had just remembered that it
wasn't very polite not to thank people for things. But still he seemed