belong to what we call the Inalienables in Our Square," said
I, and told him of the high court decision which secured to the
descendants of the original "churchyard membership," and to them alone,
the inalienable right to lie in God's Acre, provided, as in the ancient
charter, they had "died in honorable estate." I added: "Bartholomew
Storrs, as sexton, has constituted himself watchdog of our graves and
censor of our dead. He carried one case to the Supreme Court in an
attempt to keep an unhappy woman from sleeping in that pious company."

"That sour-faced prohibitionist?" growled Mr. Hines, employing what I
suspect to be the blackest anathema in his lexicon. "Is he the sexton?"

"The same. Our mortuary genius," I confirmed.

"She was a good girl, Min was," said Mr. Hines firmly, though, it might
appear, a trifle inconsequentially: "I don't care what they say. Anyway,
after I met up with her"; in which qualifying afterthought lay a whole
sorrowful and veiled history.

I waited.

"What did they say about her, down here?" he asked jealously.

"Oh, there were rumors. They didn't reach her father."

"No: tell me," he persisted. "I gotta know."

Because Mr. Hines had already impressed himself upon me as one with whom
straight talk would serve best, I acceded.

"Bartholomew Storrs said that her feet took hold on hell."

Mr. Hines's face remained impassive. Only his hands worked slightly,
perhaps kneading an imaginary throat. I perceived him to be a person of
considerable and perhaps formidable self-control.

"Not that she hadn't her friends. The Bonnie Lassie would have stood by
her if she had come back, and little Mrs. Morse, and our Dr. Smith, and
MacLachan, who thought he had lost his own girl the same way, and--and
others, plenty."

"And you, Dominie," said the hard, pink Mr. Hines.

"My dear sir, old men cannot afford harsh judgments. They are too near
their own time."

"Yeh?" said Mr. Hines absently. "I guess that's right." But his mind was
plainly elsewhere. "When would you say would be the best time to do
business with old Funeral-Clothes?" he asked after a thoughtful pause.

"You want to see Bartholomew Storrs?" I interpreted.

"Sure. I gotta deliver the death certificate to him if he runs the
graveyard, haven't I?"

"Such is the procedure, I believe."

"Besides," he added with a leer, "I want to get some of that weepy
poetry of his."

"Well; he'll sell it to you readily."

"I'll say he'll se