Page:Triangles of life, and other stories.djvu/167

Rh when he missed him there), and wrestled with him, or waited and bore with him with infinite patience until he got him home. And after a very bad and heart-breaking time of this kind, and in the dusk—or in the moonlight—an ungainly spook would haunt the grave that was

HELEN MATHEWS, 10th, 1862, 9th, A.D. 1885.

And the spook seemed to find comfort there, for after a while it would sit on a log by the cemetery fence, at a respectful distance from the grave, and calmly smoke, with eyes to the stars.

One time, when Andy was known to be out of work, the grave was found, on a Sunday visit, to have been carefully weeded round the mound, and the palisading had been given a coat of paint, by snatches between daylight and sunrise—or in the moonlight, or partly by candlelight, perhaps. There were signs of candle-grease—and a scare about ghosts. But Andy never touched the mound. The old caretaker (who fossicked in the gullies in his spare time—which was mostly) said he'd fix that. He'd got a letter with a "note" an' no name, askin' him to do it. As to the rest, and the ghost, he only cocked his pipe and looked as if he knew as much about the ways of the living as he did about the doings of the dead.

Then one morning Mrs. Mathews couldn't, and