He spent many hours contemplating it. He would enter the iron
enclosure, lock the gate after him, and sit upon the ground that was
intended some day to cover his body.
He was a familiar sight to people riding or walking past the
graveyard,--this thin old man leaning upon his cane, contentedly pondering
over the inscription on his own tombstone.
He undoubtedly found much innocent pleasure in it.
One afternoon, as he was so engaged, he was assailed by a new apprehension.
Suppose that Ricketts, the marble-cutter, should fail to inscribe the date
of his death in the space left vacant for it!
There was almost no likelihood of such an omission, but there was at least
a possibility of it.
He glanced across the cemetery to Jerry Hurley's unmarked mound, and
shuddered.
Then he thought laboriously.
When he left the cemetery in such time as to avoid a delay of his evening
meal and a consequent outburst of anger on the part of his old housekeeper,
he had taken a resolution.
"Threescore years and ten, says the Bible," he muttered to himself as he
walked homeward. "The scriptural lifetime'll do for me.
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