He stooped and laid the body in the
shallow grave, and he knelt down there and prayed.
"He filled the grave up with earth with the broken spade that he had used
in digging it. All these things required a long time. He didn't observe how
the night was passing, nor that the sky became clear and the stars shone
and the moon crossed the zenith and began to descend in the west. He
didn't notice that the stars began to pale. But he worked on until he had
finished, and then he stopped and prayed again.
"When he arose, his face was toward the east, and over the distant hilltops
he saw the purple of the dawn."
The outsider ceased to speak.
"What then?"
"That's all. My pal walked down the mountain, jumped upon the first
freight-train that passed, and has been a wanderer on the face of the earth
ever since."
There were various opinions expressed of this narrative. I quietly asked
the needy outsider as we left the club at sunrise:
"Will you tell me who your pal was--the man who buried his wife on the
mountain-top?"
There was contemptuous pity in the outsider's look as it dwelt a moment
upon me before he replied: "The man was myself.
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