Page:Daphne, an Autumn Pastoral.djvu/146

 dark earth, easily loosened in its crumbling richness. Then she took the lamp and searched in the deep thick grass for flowers, coming back with a mass of pink-tipped daisies gathered in her skirt. The sight of the brown earth set her to thinking: there ought to be some kind of shroud. Near the tool-house grew a laurel tree, she remembered, and from that she stripped a handful of green, glossy leaves, to spread upon the bottom of the grave. This done, she bore the body of Hermes to his resting-place, and strewed the corpse with pink daisies.

"Should he have Christian or heathen burial?" she asked, smiling. "This seems to be a place where the two faiths meet. I think neither. He must just be given back to Mother Nature."

She heaped the sod over him with her own hands, and fitted neatly together some bits of turf. Then she took up her lamp to go. San