age, and asked him to row me over;
but though his arms were still like whipcords, he declined. He seemed
to think the visit an intrusion upon the two who had evidently made
something as holy and unapproachable in his own life as the legends of
his saints. On the other hand, he was jealously unwilling to trust me
there alone; and when I found another man to row me, Pierre came of his
own will and took a place in the boat. The day was a heaven of May, the
lake untouched. Our oars made its only ripple. It was a strange, still
progress. Pierre, dark, silent, a man of thought and experience,
brooded all the way, as over vanished things; and the other man
evidently held him in too much awe to speak. They landed me without a
word. I walked about the spot where the log-cabin had stood, now a
blank in the vegetation. I lingered by the Point, to catch the little
ripples there; and I visited the spring where the two men used to
drink. Pierre had followed me, with the cat-like tread of the woods. He
touched my sleeve, and pointed through a forest path.

"There," he said. "That is the grave."

I understood. Ernest Hume had been buried there. I walked in a few
steps, and Pierre pointed. A forest of maiden-hair strove and fluttered
greenly. This was the grave. There was no stone to mark it; but at that
moment it seemed to me very rich in peace to lie down so and to be
absorbed into the life of the forest, throwing back no foolish outcry,
"Here I lie! Remember."

When Pierre found that I was going back without disturbing even a leaf
of his shrine, his heart opened a little to me, and he told me a few
facts of the burial. Francis Hume had brought back his father's body,
and they two had dug the grave and laid him within it. Francis had
never spoken. He looked like the dead. He had no mind. Pierre repeated
it: he had no mind.

I could understand. He was beside himself. His soul had been reft away
into merciful dulness, somewhere outside his body. When the burial was
over, Francis had dismissed him and walked away into the woods. Pierre
followed, silently. All that day they walked, Francis unconscious that
he was not alone. Then Pierre began to realize that they were going in
a great circle, and that they were coming back to the grave. Night
fell, and they were still walking, now away from the grave again, but
always in a circle. The moon came out, and Pierre, very hungry, yet not
daring to lose sight of Francis, approached him and tr