ss Lee.

"What's them?" asked Phoebe.

"The verses on the tombstones. Here is one"--she read the inscription
on the base of a narrow gray stone--"'After life's fitful fever she
sleeps well.'"

"Ach," Aunt Maria said tartly, "I guess her man knowed why he put that
on. That poor woman had three husbands and eleven children, so I guess
she had fitful fever enough."

Phoebe laughed loud as she saw the smile on the face of her teacher, but
next moment she sobered under the chiding of Aunt Maria. "Phoebe, now
you keep quiet! Abody don't laugh and act so on a graveyard!"

"Ugh," the child said a moment later, "Miss Lee, just read this one. It
always gives me shivers when I read it still.

"'Remember, man, as you pass by,
What you are now that once was I.
What I am now that you will be;
Prepare for death and follow me.'"

"That is rather startling," said Miss Lee.

Phoebe smiled and asked, "Don't you think this is a pretty graveyard?"

"Yes. How well cared for the graves are. Not a weed on most of them."

"Well," Aunt Maria explained, "the people who have dead here mostly take
care of the graves. We come up every two weeks or so and sometimes we
bring a hoe and fix our graves up nice and even. But some people are too
lazy to keep the graves clean. I hoed some pig-ears out a few graves
last week; I was ashamed of 'em, even if the graves didn't belong to
us."

In the corner near the road the aunt stopped before a plain gray
boulder.

"Phoebe's mom," she said, pointing to the inscription.

"_PHOEBE
beloved wife of
Jacob Metz
aged twenty-two years
and one month.
Souls of the righteous
are in the hand of God._"

"I'm glad," said the child as they stood by her mother's grave, "that
they put that last on, for when I come here still I like to know that my
mom ain't under all this dirt but that she's up in the Good Place like
it says there."

Miss Lee clasped the little hand in hers--what words were adequate to
express her feeling for the motherless child!

"Come on," Maria Metz said crisply, "or we'll be late." But Miss Lee
read in the brusqueness a strong feeling of sorrow for the child.

Silently the three walked through the green aisles of the old graveyard,
Aunt Maria leading the way, alone; Phoebe's hand still in the hand of
her teacher.

To Miss Lee, whose hours of public worship had hitherto be