could lay claim to little share. The great hills played a concert
among themselves, each contributing a strain of airy sweetness.

Little Joe's face brightened at once.

"Dear father," cried he, skipping cheerily to and fro, "that
strange man is gone, and the sky and the mountains all seem glad
of it!"

"Yes," growled the lime-burner, with an oath, "but he has let the
fire go down, and no thanks to him if five hundred bushels of
lime are not spoiled. If I catch the fellow hereabouts again, I
shall feel like tossing him into the furnace!"

With his long pole in his hand, he ascended to the top of the
kiln. After a moment's pause, he called to his son.

"Come up here, Joe!" said he.

So little Joe ran up the hillock, and stood by his father's side.
The marble was all burnt into perfect, snow-white lime. But on
its surface, in the midst of the circle,--snow-white too, and
thoroughly converted into lime,--lay a human skeleton, in the
attitude of a person who, after long toil, lies down to long
repose. Within the ribs--strange to say--was the shape of a human
heart.

"Was the fellow's heart made of marble?" cried Bartram, in some
perplexity at this phenomenon. "At any rate, it is burnt into
what looks like special good lime; and, taking all the bones