"Gracious sakes!" said the woman with the trowel and watering-pot as she glanced along the winding canals that led out from the summer-house--"jest see the water in them walks!" "Gol! 'tis awful!" murmured the Irishman with the spade. "There'll be a fut of water in the grave, and the ould mon to be buried the morning!" "Ah, they had a right to put off the funeral," said the other workman, "and not be giving the poor corp his death of cold." "'Tis warrum enough there where the ould mon's gone, but 'tis cold working for a poor lad like mesilf in the bottom of a wet grave. Gol! 'tis like a dreen." With that he shouldered his spade and waded reluctantly away. Second laborer paused to light his dhudeen, and then disappeared in the opposite direction, his Newfoundland taking quite naturally to the deepest puddles in their course. "Hath this fellow no feeling of his business?" asked Putnam, rising and sauntering up to the pump. The question was meant more for the younger than the elder of the two women, but the former paid no heed to it, and the latter, by way of answer, merely glanced at him suspiciously and said "H'm!" She was unlocking the tool-chest on which he had been sitting, and now raised the lid, stowed away her trowel and watering-pot, locked the chest again and put the key in her pocket, with the remark, "I guess I hain't got any more use for a sprinkle-pot to-day." "It is rather _de trop_," said Putnam. The old woman looked at him still more distrustfully, and then, drawing up her skirts, showed to his great astonishment a pair of india-rubber boots, in which she stumped away through the water and the mud, leaving in the latter colossal tracks which speedily became as pond-holes in the shallower bed of the stream. The younger woman stood at the door, gathering her dress about her ankles and gazing irresolutely at these frightful _vestigia_ which gauged all too accurately the depth of the mud and the surface-water above it. "They look like the fossil bird-tracks in the Connecticut Valley sandstone," said Putnam, following the direction of her eyes. These were very large and black. She turned them slowly on the speaker, a tallish young fellow with a face expressive chiefly of a good-natured audacity and an alertness for whatever in the way of amusement might come within range. Her look rested on him indifferently, and then turned back to the wet gravel. Putnam studied for a moment the back of her head and her figure, which was girlishly slender and clad in gray. "How extraordinary," he resumed, "that she should happen to have rubber boots on!" "She keeps them in the tool-chest. The cemetery-man gives her a key," she replied after a pause, and as if reluctantly. Her voice was very low and she had the air of talking to herself. "Isn't that a rather queer place for a wardrobe? I wonder if she keeps anything else there besides the boots and the trowel and the 'sprinkle-pot'?" "I believe she has an umbrella and some flower-seeds."