Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/171

 little body look clean and even beautiful in the wretched little hut.

One after another the fossickers took off their hats and entered, stooping through the low door. Mason sat silently at the foot of the bunk with his head supported by his hand, and watched the men with a strange, abstracted air.

Tom had ransacked the camp in search of some boards for a coffin.

'It will be the last I'll be able to―why―do for him,' he said.

At last he came to Mrs. Martin in despair. That lady took him into the dining-room, and pointed to a large white table, of which she was very proud.

'Knock that table to pieces,' she said.

Taking off the few things that were lying on it, Tom turned it over and began to knock the top off.

When he had finished the coffin one of the fossicker's wives said it looked too bare, and she ripped up her black riding-skirt, and made Tom tack the cloth over the coffin.

There was only one vehicle available in the place, and that was Martin's old dray; so about two o'clock Pat Martin attached his old horse Dublin to the shafts with sundry bits of harness and plenty of old rope, and dragged Dublin, dray and all, across to Mason's hut.

The little coffin was carried out, and two gin-cases were placed by its side in the dray to serve as seats for Mrs. Martin and Mrs. Grimshaw, who mounted in tearful silence.

Pat Martin lit his pipe, and mounted on the shaft. Mason fastened up the door of the hut with a padlock.