From a Bench in Our Square Part 21

"The Reverend Doctor Hackett."

"He has retired these two years," said the s.e.xton doubtfully. "He is very old. His mind sometimes wanders."

"She wouldn't have any one else," a.s.serted the hard, pink Mr. Hines.

"She was as particular about that as about being buried yonder." He jerked his head toward the window.

"Very well. I will be at the grave. I always am. Trust me to guide the reverend gentleman over any breach in his memory. Excuse me for a moment while I look up my elegies."

"Say," said Mr. Hines in his hoa.r.s.e, confidential croak, as the poet-s.e.xton retired, "this is dead easy. Why, the guy's on the make. For sale. He'll stand for anything. Pa.s.sing out this stuff for other folks to sign! He's a crook!"

"Make no such mistake," I advised. "Bartholomew is as honest a man as lives, in his own belief."

"Very likely. That's the worst kind," p.r.o.nounced the expert Mr. Hines.

Further commentary was cut off by the return of the s.e.xton-poet. "If you will kindly give me the death certificate of the late lamented,"

said he.

"What becomes of it after I deliver it?" asked Mr. Hines.

"Read, attested, and filed officially."

"Any one else but you see it?"

"Not necessarily."

"That's all right, then."

Hardly had Bartholomew Storrs glanced at the doc.u.ment received from Mr.

Hines than he lifted a stiffening face.

"What is this?" he challenged.

"What's what?"

The official tapped the paper with a gaunt finger. "'Minna Merivale, aged twenty-five,'" he read.

"That's the name she went by."

"_Unmarried_" read Bartholomew Storrs in a voice of doom.

"Well?"

In the s.e.xton's eyes gleamed an unholy savagery of satisfaction. "Take her away."

"_What_?"

"Bury her somewhere else. Do not think that you can pollute the ground--"

"Bartholomew!" I broke in, stepping hastily in front of Mr. Hines, for I had seen all the pink ebb out of his face, leaving it a dreadful sort of gray; and I had no desire to be witness of a murder, however much I might deem it justified.

"I'll handle him," said Mr. Hines steadily. "Now; you! You got my hundred in your jeans, ain't you!"

"Bribery!" boomed the s.e.xton. He drew out the roll of bills and let it fall from his contaminated fingers.

"Sure! Bribery," railed the other. "What'd you think? Ain't it enough for what I'm asking?" The two men glared at each other.

I broke the silence. "Exactly what are you asking, Mr. Hines?"

"File that"--he touched the doc.u.ment--"and forget it. Let Min rest out there as my wife, like she ought to have been."

"Why didn't you make her your wife?" thundered the accuser.

Some invisible thing gripped the corded throat of Mr. Hines. "Couldn't,"

he gulped. "There was--another. She wouldn't divorce me."

"Your sin has found you out," declared the self-const.i.tuted judge of the dead with a dismal sort of relish.

"Yeh? That's all right. _I'll_ pay for it. But she's paid already."

"As she lived so she has died, in sin," the inexorable voice answered.

"Let her seek burial elsewhere."

Mr. Hines leaned forward. His expression and tone were pa.s.sionless as those of a statistician proffering a tabulation: his words were fit to wring the heart of a stone.

"She's dead, ain't she?" he argued gently. "She can't hurt any one, can she? 'Specially if they don't know."

Bartholomew Storrs made a gesture of repulsion.

"Well, who'll she hurt?" pursued the other, in his form of pure and abstract reasoning. "Not her mother, I guess. Her mother's waiting for her; that's what Min said when she was--was going. And her father'll be on the other side of her. And that's all. Min never harmed anybody but herself when she was alive. How's she going to do 'em any damage now, just lying there, resting? Be reasonable, man!"

Be pitiful, oh, man! For there was a time not so long past when you, with all your stern probity and your unwinking conscience, needed pity; yes, and pleaded for it when the mind was out of control. Think back, Bartholomew Storrs, to the day when you stood by another grave, close to that which waits to-day for the weary sleeper--Bartholomew Storrs rested, opened the door and stood by it, grimly waiting. Mr. Hines turned to me.

"What is this thing, Dominie; a man or a snake? Will I kill it?"

"Bartholomew," I began. "When we--"

"Not a word from you, Dominie. My mind is made up."

"The girl is Isabel Munn's daughter."

I saw a tremor shake the gaunt frame.

"When we buried Isabel Munn, you came back in the night to weep at her grave."

He thrust out a warding hand toward me.

"Why did you weep over Isabel Munn's grave, Bartholomew?"