“Well, ef wild-oats is ez long-lived ez what wheat is, she can't no mo'n ward off the growth du'ing her lifetime - that is, ef what parson sez is true, thet a grain o' wheat has laid in a ol' tombstone 'longside one o' these dumby mummies a thousand years, an' then sprouted quick ez it was took out. Hard to smaller, that story is, for a farmer, thet's had to do with mildewed seeds, but I reckon ef preachers don't know the ins an' outs of mummies, nobody don't. But the way I look at it, any chemicals thet's strong enough to keep a mummy in countenance that long would exercise a savin' influ'nce on anything layin' round him, maybe. Pity they couldn't be applied to a man in life, so ez to - Jack Robinson! What in thunder - She's a-comin' this way!”

It is a long way from the buried secrets of Egypt to the Simpkinsville cemetery, and to be transported the entire distance in a twinkling by the apparition of a dreaded woman bearing down upon one is what might be called a jolting experience. This is exactly what happened to Elijah at this trying moment.

The widow Christian had stepped briskly out of the enclosure, and was facing the tree under which he sat.

There be “weeping-willows” that truly weep, while some, with all the outward semblance of sorrow, do seem only to whine and whimper, so sparse and attenuated are their dripping fringes - fringes capable even of flippancy if the wind be of a flirtatious mind.

Of this latter sort was the one beneath which Elijah had taken refuge this morning. The meagre ambush that had seemed quite adequate in the lesser exigency was as nothing now as through its flimsy screen he saw disaster surely approaching. But his moment of supreme panic was mercifully brief.

Before she had reached his hiding-place the widow turned hastily aside. She was bent upon a definite destination, and Elijah had scarcely had time to rally from his first fright before he discovered that she was going to his wife's grave. He could not see her when she had reached it, but he saw distinctly her lengthened shadow on the sward behind her. When at last she stopped there, he even saw this same witness make a deliberate tour of the grave. He saw it bend and rise and fall, and then, when it was gone, he watched for the widow to appear at the farther side, and he saw her at last go out the graveyard gate. In a moment more he heard the roll of wheels, and, standing up, he even descried the top of her buggy as she drove away. And then, taking off his hat and mopping his forehead, he came out of hiding.

This visit to his wife's grave gave Elijah a most uncomfortable sensation, and he hurried there to see how things were. He had, he knew, carefully covered his morning bud, but still he was uneasy.

When he returned to the grave he found the grass upon it dry. There seemed to be otherwise no change in its appearance, and he was turning away, somewhat reassured, when a fresh clod caught his eye. It seemed to have been overturned. He stooped down, his heart thumping like a sledge-hammer, while he made a careful examination.

The clod lay exactly over the spot where he had, an hour ago, deposited his rose-bud, and its damp side was upward. A bent hair-pin lay beside it, and there was damp earth upon its points. Lifting the lump, he found its nether side still warm from the sun. Beneath it, clearly discernible without further removal, was the pink edge of a rose leaf.

Elijah was not ordinarily a nervous man, but when he rose from the grave he was trembling so that he felt it safe to repair to his seat beneath the willow until he should recover himself.

The next moments were possibly as wretched as any that had hitherto come into his life. As he sat with his face buried in his hands, he felt the same sort of exquisite torture that he had occasionally experienced in a dream, when for a brief moment he had believed himself walking the streets naked, in a glare of light, and had waked up with a start to a blessed consciousness of a friendly darkness and his night-shirt. There was no awakening possible now. A second trip to the grave only prolonged the horrors of the nightmare. He took off his hat again and mopped and mopped his face and head and neck. Then, in sheer desperation, he began walking slowly up and down the gravelled paths, his hands nervously clasped behind him, and before he realized it he found himself at the opening in the Christian hedge, and he walked in.

There was a pretty rustic seat just within the enclosure, and he sat down upon it. Even his state of mind, and the fresh impression of the obtrusive widow rudely etched with the muddy point of a hair-pin upon the sensitive plate of his consciousness, could not prevent his feeling the sweetness and beauty of this spot. The grave in its centre was already, in the early spring, a bed of blooming flowers. Tender sprays of smilax climbed about the marble slab at its head, while from the urn at the foot of the mound depended rich garlands of moneywort and tradescantia, and the air was fragrant with the perfumed leaf of pungent herb and flowering shrub.

Along the lower borders of the mound, just above a battlement of inverted bottles that outlined its extreme limits, there were signs of the recent passage of the trowel, and here closer scrutiny revealed a single line of wilting plants, evidently just set out.

Elijah looked about him for some moments, and then, man that he was, he began to cry. Perhaps it was essential to his manhood that his emotion should be interpreted as anger. At any rate, the turmoil within him found expression in words that, as nearly as they could be distinguished among sobs, were such as these:

“The idee of John Christian, thet never did a decent thing in his life, layin' comf'tably down in sech a place ez this - an' bein' waited on - an' bloomed over! An' here I, thet have tried to ac' upright all my life, am obligated to be a laughin'-stalk to his fool widder an' anybody she's a mind to tell! They've been times in my life when I'd give every doggone cent I've made du'in' my durn blame life ef I'd 'a' been raised to swear - I'll be jim-blasted ef I wouldn't! No widder of sech a low-down, beer-drinkin' cuss ez John Christian need to think she can set out to pester me - a-nosin' round my private business with her confounded investigatin' hair-pin! They ain't nothin' thet a woman with a hairpin ain't capable of doin' - nothin'!”

He sobbed for some time without further words; but presently, while he wiped his eyes, he said, in quite another voice:

“Ef - ef Jinny had jest 'a' had the fo'thought to say bushes instid o' buds, why - why, they'd 'a' been planted long ago - an' forgot - an' she'd be havin' her own roses fresh every day; instid o' which - ” And now he sobbed again. “Instid o' which John Christian's widder has got the satisfaction of holdin' me up on a hair-pin p'int for all Simpkinsville to laugh at - same ez ef I was some sort o' guyaskutus!”

As he raised his face, dashing his tears away with his great bare hands, his eyes fell upon the inscription upon the stone before him. The Bible verse quoted there seemed an assumption of superior sanctity, and he resented it as a personal taunt.

“Yas,” he retorted, “I see you're takin' to quotin' Scripture, John Christian, but you needn't to quote it at me! You're set out first class, you are, Bible tex' at yo' Lead an' flowervase at yo' feet, but you ain't the first low-down cuss thet's been Bible-texted out of all recognition.”

Was it the answering silence of the grave in response to this volley that rebuked him? Perhaps so, for certainly there was sudden contrition expressed in his next words, spoken in apologetic voice:

“God forgive me for strikin' a man when he's down; but he does seem so set up - flowered all over - an' nothin' to do - an' a lovin' wife - ”

Just as Elijah said these last words there was a stir at his side, and he turned to see the widow Christian standing before him, plants and trowel in hand. She started on first perceiving him, but his tearful, dejected state was an appeal to her womanly sympathies. She took her seat beside him on the settee.

“Yas,” she said, mournfully, “everybody knows she was a lovin' wife, Mr. Tomkins, an' I ain't surprised to see you all broke up this way. I been through it all, en' I know what it is.” She sighed heavily. “They ain't a grain o' the bitterness but I've tasted - not a one - an' quinine an' bitter alloways is sugar to it. But I'm mighty glad, Mr. Tomkins, to see thet you feel neighborly enough to come into my lot to give way. You'll be all the better for it. It's what I do myself. When I git nervous in the house, an' seem to look for him to come in, an' feel sort o' like ez ef he might be down-town an' maybe things goin' wrong, why, I jest come here, an' I see it's all right, an' I cry it out an' go home.

“I hate to see you come twice-t in one day, though, Mr. Tomkins,” she added, after some hesitation. “Too much sorrer starts the heart a-cankerin'! Somehow I had a notion thet you'd been here an' gone over a hour ago. I come an' set out this row o' pansies round the edge of his grave befo' sunup - an' I was jest seven short. So I went an' fetched these to finish the line.”

To attempt to describe Elijah's sensations during these first moments would be folly. He simply had none. It was a season of general suspensions.

In speaking of it afterwards, he said: “While she set there a-talkin', seem like she'd move away off into the distance tell she wasn't no bigger 'n a chiney doll, an' every word she'd say would sound clair an' fine same ez ef a doll-baby was to commence to talk by machinery. An' when she'd be away off an' dwindlin' down to a speck, I'd be gittin' bigger an' bigger tell I'd seem like a sort o' swole-up pin-cushion with needles a-stickin' in me all over. Then she'd start forward an' commence to git bigger, an' I'd swivel an' swivel, tell time she come up to me, with a voice like thunder, I'd be so puny seem like I was li'ble to go out any minute.”

But in this view of the situation we have the advantage of the retrospect.

The visible picture at the time was of Tomkins politely facing his entertainer, with possibly too much solicitude as to the wiping of his face, but still with what she was pleased to accept as polite attention. She could have suspected nothing abnormal in it, for her next words were:

“But I ain't a-goin' to bother you now, Mr. Tomkins; you jest take yo' time to ease up, an' I'll plant these plants. They go in right here at his feet.”

Even as she spoke she fell upon her knees and set about her task. But there was no intermission in her talk.

“You don't know what a comfort this grave is to me, Mr. Tomkins,” she said, with a sigh, as, taking a pin from her back hair, she began carefully drawing out the damp roots of the plant she held. “Ef a body studies over it rightly, there's a heap o' communion with the dead th'ough grave-tendin'! Now these pansies here - f 'instance - Pansies, you know - why, they're flowers of remembrance, an' a person can plant any kind they see fit, accordin' to their hearts' desires. There's the yallers and deep reds - an' mixed. Some o' the mixed ones is marked so ez to make reg'lar fool faces. These here are all dead black.” She sighed again. “I did think I'd put in a purple or two this season, but I 'ain't had the heart to - not yet. He hated black,” she added in a moment, “but of co'se in this my heart has to have some consideration, an' I've done a good many things to pacify him -

“These bottles, f'instance - ” She sat back upon her heels, while her eye made the circuit of the bottle border. “These bottles, now,” she repeated, with manifest hesitation - “I 'ain't never mentioned them to nobody before, Mr. Tomkins, an' I don't know why I'm a-doin' it to you, 'less 'n it's seein' you in the same state o' mind thet I've been th'ough. You'll find, ez you go on, Mr. Tomkins, thet unless a heart gets expressed one way or another, its mighty ap' to palpitate inwardly. Have you ever had yo' heart to palpitate inward, Mr. Tomkins?”

She had turned, and was looking straight into her guest's face. He had had time to begin to recover his bearings by this time. The me and the not me were gradually assuming proper relations in his returning consciousness. To be exact, he had just begun definitely to realize where he sat, and that John Christian's widow was talking to him when she put her question.

His first conscious act had been to stop mopping his face and to put his handkerchief away. It was while he was in the act of this bestowal that there came a realization of her expectant face and the necessity of speech.

“Well, reely - Mis' Christian -” he began.

“Of co'se,” she interrupted, “you may've had it an' not known it. You tell it by feelin' the need of somethin' an' not knowin' jest what it is. It might be fresh air or aromatic sperits of ammonia, an' then again it might be somebody to talk to. With some it's religion. Of co'se, with me - with me it's been this grave.

“These bottles, now - ef they was one thing on earth thet could 'a' been called a bone of contention in our lives, Mr. Tomkins, it was them identical bottles. I don't reckon I'm a-tellin' you any secret when I say that. Everybody was obligated to know pore John's one fault, because it was that sort of a fault - outspoke an' confessed. That's where John was unlucky. They's lots o' folks thet passes for better 'n what he passed thet has inward faults thet he'd 'a' spewed out o' his mouth. Sech ez that I class ez whited sepulchures - nothin' else. But his one outward fault - why, someway it nagged me constant, an' I know I never showed proper patience with it.

“But now” - she sighed sadly - “but now I've took every endurin' bottle I could lay hands on thet he ever emptied, an' I've brought 'em to him here. An' I've laid my pansy line 'longside of 'em. But I can't say yet thet they ain't a thorn in the flesh to me sometimes - them bottles.

“An' I've even done more than that, Mr. Tomkins; I've planted mint here - jest ez a token of forgiveness - nothin' else. An', tell the truth, I'm even gittin' so's I like the smell of it. Maybe I'll git entirely reconciled to the bottles - in time. I've had mighty little patience with spearmint all these years, which I now reelize was very foolish, 'cause a green herb ain't no ways responsible for the company it's made to keep, an' I don't know ez they's anything thet could take the mint's place in a julep an' do less harm 'n what the mint does. I don't know but it's maybe a savin' grace to it; an' then it's a Bible herb, you know - mint an' anise an' cumin.”

She had turned away now, and was resuming her work of transplanting. Her last words were spoken as if in half-forgetfulness of her guest. Still, this was possibly only in the seeming, for she said, in a moment, “This is every bit a work of love, Mr. Tomkins.” She dropped a pansy into place as she spoke, measuring its distance from the inverted bottle with the length of her hair-pin. “He always said he didn't want no foolishness made over his grave - but I think sech modesty ez that should have its reward.”

She had presently completed her planting, and after she had scraped the trowel with her hairpin, cleansed the pin's point in turn against the blade, and then wiped them upon a folded leaf, she mechanically restored the little implement to her hair and rose from her knees.

“I'm reel glad I had to come back to finish that transplantin', ez it's turned out, Mr. Tomkins.” She looked straight at him, with absolute ingenuousness, as she spoke. “I'm glad, 'cause I feel thet I've been able to offer you a little consolation. I was tempted to let them plants lay over tell to-morrer, but I thought I'd feel mo' contented all day ef every beer-bottle had its pansy. Ef they was anything over, I'd ruther it would be a pansy, to make shore of lovin' forgiveness.”

She had turned again to the grave now.

“I don't often count my plants when I fetch 'em over, an' I mos' gen'ally have a few to spare, an' I set 'em round on graves thet don't have much care. I try to keep the potter's field a-bloomin' a little with my left-overs.”