ll it to me," returned Mr. Hines with a grimness which
I failed to comprehend.

"Now is as good a time as any to catch him in his office." I pointed to
a sign at the farther end of the yard.

Mr. Hines seemed in no hurry to go. With his elegantly lacquered cane,
he picked at the sod, undecidedly. His chill, veiled eyes roved about
the open space. He lifted his pearl-gray derby, and, for lack of a
handkerchief, wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. Although the
May day was cool and brisk with wind, his knuckles glistened when they
descended. I began to suspect that, despite his stony self-command, Mr.
Hines's nerves were not all that they should be.

"Perhaps you'd like me to introduce you to Mr. Storrs," I hazarded.

The cold and filmy eyes gleamed with an instant's dim warmth. "Dominie,
you're a good guy," responded Mr. Hines. "If a dead cinch at ten to one,
all fruited up for next week, the kind of thing you don't hand on to
your own brother, would be any use to you--No? I'm off again," he
apologized. "Well--let's go."

We went. At the doorstep of Bartholomew Storrs's office he paused.

"This sexton-guy," he said anxiously, "he don't play the ponies, ever, I
wouldn't suppose?"

"No more often than he commits murder or goes to sleep in church," I
smiled.

"Yeh?" he answered, disheartened. "I gotta get to him some other way. On
the poetry--and that's out of my line."

"I don't quite see what your difficulty is."

"By what you tell me, it's easier to break into a swell Fifth Avenue
Club than into this place."

"Except for those having the vested right, as your wife has."

"And this sexton-guy handles the concession for--he's got the say-so,"
he corrected himself hastily--"on who goes in and who stays out. Is
that right?"

"Substantially."

"And he'd rather keep 'em out than let 'em in?"

"Bartholomew," I explained, "considers that the honor of God's Acre is
in his keeping. He has a fierce sort of jealousy about it, as if he had
a proprietary interest in the place."

"I get you!" Mr. Hines's corded throat worked painfully. "You don't
suppose the old goat would slip Min a blackball?" he gulped.

"How can he? As an 'Inalienable'--"

"Yeh; I know. But wasn't there something about a clean record? I'll tell
_you_, Dominie"--Mr. Hines's husky but assured voice trailed away into
a miserable, thick whisper--"as to what he said--about her feet taking
hold on hell--I guess there was a time--I guess ab