d the pillow and
took out his crown that I knew to be there all of six months before he
breathed his last." She sighed deeply. "It's not everyone that has a
crown"--there was wistful pride in her voice--"and them that has, they
do say, is sure of another up yonder." The Widow Plater lifted
tear-dimmed eyes heavenward. "And what's more, it is the bounden duty of
them that's left to keep the crown of their dead to their own dying day.
Josephus's death crown I'll pass on to my oldest daughter when my time
comes."

Carefully she folded the matted circle of feathers in its muslin
covering and reverently replaced it in the bureau drawer.

A WHITE FEATHER

Rhodie Polhemus who lived on Bear Fork of Puncheon Creek was one who
believed in signs. It had started long years ago when Alamander, her
husband, had met an untimely fate. That morning after he had gone out
hunting Rhodie was sweeping the floor when she saw a white feather
fluttering about the brush of her broom. It hovered strangely in midair,
then sank slowly to the puncheon floor near the door. "The angel of
death is nigh. There'll be a corpse under this roof this day." Rhodie
trembled with fear. Sure enough Alamander was carried in stark dead
before sundown. It came at a time when there wasn't a plank on the
place. They had disposed of their timber, which was little enough, as
fast as it was sawed. So that there was not a piece left with which to
make Alamander's burying box. Nor was there a whipsaw in the whole
country round with which to work, the itinerate sawyer having gone on
with his property to another creek. But folks were neighborly and
willing. They cut down a fine poplar tree, reduced a log of it to proper
length and with ax and adze hewed out a coffin for Rhodie's husband,
hollowing it out into a trough and shaping the ends to fit the corpse.
The lid they made of clapboards. Placing a coverlid inside the trough
they laid the body of Alamander upon it, made fast the lid, and bore him
off to the burying ground.

"I knowed his time had come," Rhodie often repeated the story, "when I
found the white feather--and when it hovered near the door where
Alamander went out that morning."

There were other signs.

All of a week after Alamander was buried Rhodie claimed she had seen the
mound above him rise and move in ripples the full length of the log
coffin in which he lay buried. "Could be he's not resting easy," the old
woman sa