her that's buried here--last April. He was in the hospital
learning the doctor's business when he was took down."

"In the hospital? Was he from the South, do you know?"

"Well, that I can't say: like enough he was."

"Did you say that she is poor?"

"So they was telling me at the funeral. It was a mighty poor funeral
too--not more'n a couple of hacks. But you can't tell much from that,
with the fashions now-a-days: some of the richest folks buries private
like. You don't see no such funerals now as they had ten years back.
I've seen fifty kerridges to onst a-comin' in that gate," waving his
pipe impressively toward that piece of architecture, "and that was when
kerridge-hire was half again as high as it is now. She must have spent a
goodly sum in green-house flowers, though: fresh b[=o]quets 'most every
day she keeps a-fetchin'."

"Well, good-day," said Putnam, starting off.

"Good-day, sir."

Putnam had himself just completed his studies at the medical college
when attacked by fever, and he now recalled somewhat vaguely a student
of the name of Pinckney, and remembered to have heard that he was a
Southerner. The gatekeeper's story increased the interest which he was
beginning to feel in his new acquaintance, and he resolved to follow up
his inauspicious beginnings to a better issue. He knew that great
delicacy would be needed in making further approaches, and so decided to
keep out of her sight for a time. In the course of the next few days he
ascertained, by visits to the cemetery and talks with the keeper, that
she now seldom visited her brother's grave in the forenoon, although
during the first month after his death she had spent all her days and
some of her nights beside it.

"I hadn't the heart, sir, to turn her out at sundown, accordin' to the
regulations; so I'd leave the gate kinder half on the jar, and she'd
slip out when she had a mind to."

Putnam read the inscription on the tombstone, which ran as follows: "To
the Memory of Henry Pinckney. Born October 29th, 1852. Died April 27th,
187-;" and under this the text, "If thou have borne him hence, tell me
where thou hast laid him." He noticed with a sudden twinge of pity that
the flowers on the grave, though freshly picked every day, were
wild-flowers--mostly the common field varieties, with now and then a
rarer blossom from wood or swamp, and now and then a garden flower. He
gathered from this that the sister's purse was running low, and that she
sp