"You an' me are the only ones that knows the secret, I guess. Some day,
'fore he dies, I'm goin' to take up that headstun an' hide it, but he'll
never know it's done--no, sir--not 'til he gits to the judgment seat,
anyway."

The old man stopped and rubbed his hands together as if he were washing
them of the whole matter. The dusk of evening had fallen and crocked the
white marble and blurred the lettered legends around us. The mossy
stones now reminded me only of the innumerable host of the dead. Softly
the notes of a song sparrow scattered down into the silence that
followed the strange story.

The old man rose and straightened himself and blew out his breath and
brushed his hands upon his trousers by way of stepping down into this
world again out of the close and dusty loft of his memory. But I called
him back.

"What has become of Enoch?" I asked.

"Wal, sir, Enoch started off west 'bout three year ago an' we ain't
heard a word from him since that day--nary a word, mister. I suppose we
will some time. He grew into a good man, but there was a kind of a queer
streak in the blood, as ye might say, on both sides kind o'. We've wrote
letters out to Wisconsin, where he was p'intin' for, an' to places on
the way, but we can't git no news 'bout him. Mebbe he was killed by the
Injuns."

We walked out of the graveyard together in silence. Dimly above a
distant ridge I could see stark, dead timber looming on a scarlet cloud
in the twilight. It is curious how carefully one notes the setting of
the scene in which his spirit has been deeply stirred.

I could see a glimmer of a light in the thicket of pines down the
valley. I unhitched and mounted my horse.

"Take the first turn to the right," said the old man as he picked up his
scythe.

"I'm very much obliged to you," I said.

"No ye ain't, nuther," he answered. "Leastways there ain't no reason why
ye should be."

My horse, impatient as ever to find the end of the road, hurried me
along and in a moment or two we were down under the pine grove that
surrounded the house of old Squire Fullerton--a big, stone house with a
graveled road around it. A great black dog came barking and growling at
me from the front porch. I rode around the house and he followed. Beyond
the windows I could see the gleam of candle-light and moving figures. A
man came out of the back door as I neared it.

"Who's there?" he demanded.

"My name is Barton Baynes from St. Lawrence County. Kate