another.

And so it came to pass that when it began to grow lighter and the rain
stopped, and the sun glanced out again on the reeking earth and
saturated foliage, conversation grew general.

"Gracious sakes!" said the woman with the trowel and watering-pot as
she glanced along the winding canals that led out from the
summer-house--"jest see the water in them walks!"

"Gol! 'tis awful!" murmured the Irishman with the spade. "There'll be a
fut of water in the grave, and the ould mon to be buried the morning!"

"Ah, they had a right to put off the funeral," said the other workman,
"and not be giving the poor corp his death of cold."

"'Tis warrum enough there where the ould mon's gone, but 'tis cold
working for a poor lad like mesilf in the bottom of a wet grave. Gol!
'tis like a dreen." With that he shouldered his spade and waded
reluctantly away.

Second laborer paused to light his dhudeen, and then disappeared in the
opposite direction, his Newfoundland taking quite naturally to the
deepest puddles in their course.

"Hath this fellow no feeling of his business?" asked Putnam, rising and
sauntering up to the pump. The question was meant more for the younger
than the elder of the two women, but the former paid no heed to it, and
the latter, by way of answer, merely glanced at him suspiciously and
said "H'm!" She was unlocking the tool-chest on which he had been
sitting, and now raised the lid, stowed away her trowel and
watering-pot, locked the chest again and put the key in her pocket, with
the remark, "I guess I hain't got any more use for a sprinkle-pot
to-day."

"It is rather _de trop_," said Putnam.

The old woman looked at him still more distrustfully, and then, drawing
up her skirts, showed to his great astonishment a pair of india-rubber
boots, in which she stumped away through the water and the mud, leaving
in the latter colossal tracks which speedily became as pond-holes in the
shallower bed of the stream. The younger woman stood at the door,
gathering her dress about her ankles and gazing irresolutely at these
frightful _vestigia_ which gauged all too accurately the depth of the
mud and the surface-water above it.

"They look like the fossil bird-tracks in the Connecticut Valley
sandstone," said Putnam, following the direction of her eyes.

These were very large and black. She turned them slowly on the speaker,
a tallish young fellow with a face expressive chiefly of a good-natured
audacity and a