not been listening; he could not hear him breathe, and he
came forward to him quickly from the shadow of the tree where he sat.

"Well?" Jackson whispered, turning his eyes upon him.

"Well?" Jeff returned.

"I guess you'd better let it alone," said Jackson.

"All right. That's what I think, too."

XLIX.

Jackson died a week later, and they buried him in the old family lot
in the farthest corner of the orchard. His mother and Cynthia put on
mourning for him, and they stood together by his open grave, Mrs. Durgin
leaning upon her son's arm and the girl upon her father's. The women
wept quietly, but Jeff's eyes were dry, though his face was discharged
of all its prepotent impudence. Westover, standing across the grave
from him, noticed the marks on his forehead that he said were from his
scrapping, and wondered what really made them. He recognized the spot
where they were standing as that where the boy had obeyed the law of his
nature and revenged the stress put upon him for righteousness. Over the
stone of the nearest grave Jeff had shown a face of triumphant derision
when he pelted Westover with apples. The painter's mind fell into a
chaos of conjecture and misgiving, so that he scarcely took in the words
of the composite service which the minister from the Union Chapel at the
Huddle read over the dead.

Some of the guests from the hotel came to the funeral, but others who
were not in good health remained away, and there was a general sense
among them, which imparted itself to Westover, that Jackson's dying so,
at the beginning of the season, was not a fortunate incident. As he sat
talking with Jeff at a corner of the piazza late in the afternoon, Frank
Whitwell came up to them and said there were some people in the office
who had driven over from another hotel to see about board, but they had
heard there was sickness in the house, and wished to talk with him.

"I won't come," said Jeff.

"They're not satisfied with what I've said," the boy urged. "What shall
I tell them?"

"Tell them to-go to the devil," said Jeff, and when Frank Whitwell made
off with this message for delivery in such decent terms as he could
imagine for it, Jeff said, rather to himself than to Westover, "I don't
see how we're going to run this hotel with that old family lot down
there in the orchard much longer."

He assumed the air of full authority at Lion's Head; and Westover
felt the stress of a painful conjecture in regard to