Page:Peak and Prairie (1894).pdf/62

 I had a shovel, or something, I think I could dig a first-rate grave."

The fair mourner looked at him doubtfully, and then she looked at his namesake, and apparently the poetic justice of the thing appealed to her.

"There's a spade over at the house," she said, "and I don't know that it's any more than fair that you should bury him."

Sir Bryan's spirits rose still higher at the hope of partial expiation of his crime; but with his rising spirits came a premonition of a good healthy appetite which would soon be due, and he asked meekly: "Would you mind, then, if I were to go back to town first, to get something to eat? A person doesn't dig so well, I suppose, on an empty stomach."

"No, you'd better stay and get your dinner with me. It will take you pretty much all day to bury Brian. You probably never buried a bear before," she added, as patronizingly as if she herself had been a professional grave-digger, "and you don't know what a piece of work it's going to be."

They started to push their way through the scrub-oaks.

"Shall I lead your horse for you?" Sir Bryan asked.