n't unwilling, if
it was cheap. Well, the two best and biggest plots was No. 8 and No.
9--both of a size; nice comfortable room for twenty-six--twenty-six
full-growns, that is; but you reckon in children and other shorts, and
strike an average, and I should say you might lay in thirty, or maybe
thirty-two or three, pretty genteel--no crowdin' to signify."

"That's a plenty, William. Which one did you buy?"

"Well, I'm a-comin' to that, John. You see, No. 8 was thirteen dollars,
No. 9 fourteen--"

"I see. So's't you took No. 8."

"You wait. I took No. 9. And I'll tell you for why. In the first place,
Deacon Shorb wanted it. Well, after the way he'd gone on about Seth's
wife overlappin' his prem'ses, I'd 'a' beat him out of that No. 9 if I'd
'a' had to stand two dollars extra, let alone one. That's the way I felt
about it. Says I, what's a dollar, anyway? Life's on'y a pilgrimage,
says I; we ain't here for good, and we can't take it with us, says I. So
I just dumped it down, knowin' the Lord don't suffer a good deed to go
for nothin', and cal'latin' to take it out o' somebody in the course
o' trade. Then there was another reason, John. No. 9's a long way the
handiest lot in the simitery, and the likeliest for situation. It lays
right on top of a knoll in the dead center of the buryin' ground; and
you can see Millport from there, and Tracy's, and Hopper Mount, and
a raft o' farms, and so on. There ain't no better outlook from a
buryin'-plot in the state. Si Higgins says so, and I reckon he ought to
know. Well, and that ain't all. 'Course Shorb had to take No. 8; wa'n't
no help for 't. Now, No. 8 jines onto No. 9, but it's on the slope
of the hill, and every time it rains it 'll soak right down onto the
Shorbs. Si Higgins says 't when the deacon's time comes, he better take
out fire and marine insurance both on his remains."

Here there was the sound of a low, placid, duplicate chuckle of
appreciation and satisfaction.

"Now, John, here's a little rough draft of the ground that I've made
on a piece of paper. Up here in the left-hand corner we've bunched the
departed; took them from the old graveyard and stowed them one alongside
o' t'other, on a first-come-first-served plan, no partialities, with
Gran'ther Jones for a starter, on'y because it happened so, and windin'
up indiscriminate with Seth's twins. A little crowded towards the end of
the lay-out, maybe, but we reckoned 'twa'n't best to scatter the twins.
Well, n