"No more! Well, I trust in Heaven she has carried her secret with her,"
said the doctor. "If anything could comfort you for her loss, it would be
that. But what brings you to Boston?"

"Only a dried flower or two," said Septimius, producing some specimens of
the strange growth of the grave. "I want you to tell me about them."

The naturalist took the flowers in his hand, one of which had the root
appended, and examined them with great minuteness and some surprise; two
or three times looking in Septimius's face with a puzzled and inquiring
air; then examined them again.

"Do you tell me," said he, "that the plant has been found indigenous in
this country, and in your part of it? And in what locality?"

"Indigenous, so far as I know," answered Septimius. "As to the
locality,"--he hesitated a little,--"it is on a small hillock, scarcely
bigger than a molehill, on the hill-top behind my house."

The naturalist looked steadfastly at him with red, burning eyes, under his
deep, impending, shaggy brows; then again at the flower.

"Flower, do you call it?" said he, after a reexamination. "This is no
flower, though it so closely resembles one, and a beautiful one,--yes,
most beautiful. But it is no flower. It is a certain very rare fungus,--so
rare as almost to be thought fabulous; and there are the strangest
superstitions, coming down from ancient times, as to the mode of
production. What sort of manure had been put into that hillock? Was it
merely dried leaves, the refuse of the forest, or something else?"