still, you
know; that's all."

He hurried, a little in front of her, over the frosty grass beyond the
church; and she saw him looking at the grave very earnestly as she
came up. He said nothing for a moment.

"I'm afraid the monument's rather ... rather awful.... Do you like the
flowers, Laurie?"

She was noticing that the chrysanthemums were a little blackened by
the frost; and hardly attended to the fact that he did not answer.

"Do you like the flowers?" she said again presently.

He started from his prolonged stare downwards.

"Oh yes, yes," he said; "they're ... they're lovely.... Maggie, the
grave's all right, isn't it: the mound, I mean?"

At first she hardly understood.

"Oh yes ... what do you mean?"

He sighed, whether in relief or not she did not know.

"Only ... only I have heard of mounds sinking sometimes, or cracking
at the sides. But this one--"

"Oh yes," interrupted the girl. "But this was very bad yesterday....
What's the matter, Laurie?"

He had turned his face with some suddenness, and there was in it a
look of such terror that she herself was frightened.

"What were you saying, Maggie?"

"It was nothing of any importance," said the girl hurriedly. "It
wasn't in the least disfigured, if that--"

"Maggie, will you please tell me exactly in what condition this grave
was yesterday? When was it put right?"

"I ... I noticed it when I brought the chrysanthemums up yesterday
morning. The ground was sunk a little, and cracks were showing at the
sides. I told the sexton to put it right. He seems to have done it....
Laurie, why do you look like that?"

He was staring at her with an expression that might have meant
anything. She would not have been surprised if he had burst into a fit
of laughter. It was horrible and unnatural.

"Laurie! Laurie! Don't look like that!"

He turned suddenly away and left her. She hurried after him.

On the way to the house he told her the whole story from beginning to
end.

III

The two were sitting together in the little smoking-room at the back
of the house on the last night of Laurie's holidays. He was to go back
to town next morning.

Maggie had passed a thoroughly miserable week. She had had to keep her
promise not to tell Mrs. Baxter--not that that lady would have been of
much service, but the very telling would be a relief--and things
really were not serious enough to justify her telling Father Mahon.

To her the misery lay, not in any b