n alertness for whatever in the way of amusement might
come within range. Her look rested on him indifferently, and then turned
back to the wet gravel.

Putnam studied for a moment the back of her head and her figure, which
was girlishly slender and clad in gray. "How extraordinary," he resumed,
"that she should happen to have rubber boots on!"

"She keeps them in the tool-chest. The cemetery-man gives her a key,"
she replied after a pause, and as if reluctantly. Her voice was very low
and she had the air of talking to herself.

"Isn't that a rather queer place for a wardrobe? I wonder if she keeps
anything else there besides the boots and the trowel and the
'sprinkle-pot'?"

"I believe she has an umbrella and some flower-seeds."

"Now, if she only had a Swedish cooking-box and a patent camp-lounge,"
said Putnam laughing, "she could keep house here in regular style."

"She spends a great deal of time here: her children are all here, she
told me."

"Well, it's an odd taste to live in a burying-ground, but one might do
worse perhaps. There's nothing like getting accustomed gradually to what
you've got to come to. And then if one must select a cemetery for a
residence, this isn't a bad choice. Have you noticed what quaint old
ways they have about it? At sunset the sexton rings a big bell that
hangs in the arch over the gateway: he told me he had done it every day
for twenty years. It's not done, I believe, on the principle of firing a
sunset gun, but to let people walking in the grounds know the gate is to
be shut. There's a high stone wall, you know, and somebody might get
shut in all night. Think of having to spend the night here!"

"I have spent the night here often," she answered, again in an absent
voice and as if murmuring to herself.

"_You_ have?" exclaimed Putnam. "Oh, you slept in the tool-chest, I
suppose, on the old lady's shake-down."

She was silent, and he began to have a weird suspicion that she had
spoken in earnest. "This is getting interesting," he said to himself;
and then aloud, "You must have seen queer sights. Of course, when the
clock struck twelve all the ghosts popped out and sat on their
respective tombstones. The ghosts in this cemetery must be awfully old
fellows. It doesn't look as if they had buried any one here for a
hundred and thirty-five years. I've often thought it would be a good
idea to inscribe _Complet_ over the gate, as they do on a Paris
omnibus."

"You speak very lig