When Kike's mother and Brady rode up to the door on Sunday morning, the people had already begun to gather in crowds, drawn by the expectation that Morton would preach in the Hickory Ridge church. Hearing that Kike, whose piety was famous all the country over, was dying, they filled Doctor Morgan's house and yard, sitting in sad, silent groups on the fences and door-steps, and standing in the shade of the yard trees. As the dying preacher's mother passed through, the crowd of country people fell back and looked reverently at her. Kike was already far gone. He was barely able to greet his mother and the good-hearted Brady, whose demonstrative Irish grief knew no bounds. Then Kike and Nettie were married, amidst the tears of all. This sort of a wedding is more hopelessly melancholy than a funeral. After the marriage Nettie knelt by Kike's side, and he rallied for a moment and solemnly pronounced a benediction on her. Then he lifted up his hands, crying faintly, "O Lord! I have kept back nothing. Amen." His hands dropped upon the head of Nettie. The people had crowded into the hall and stood at the windows. For awhile all thought him dead. A white pigeon flew in at one of the windows and lighted upon the bed of the dying man. The early Western people believed in marvels, and Kike was to them a saint. At sight of the snow-white dove pluming itself upon his breast they all started back. Was it a heavenly visitant? Kike opened his eyes and gazed upon the dove a moment. Then he looked significantly at Nettie, then at the people. The dove plumed itself a moment longer, looked round on the people out of its mute and gentle eyes, then flitted out of the window again and disappeared in the sunlight. A smile overspread the dying man's face, he clasped his hands upon his bosom, and it was a full minute before anybody discovered that the pure, heroic spirit of Hezekiah Lumsden had gone to its rest. He had requested that no name should be placed over his grave. "Let God have any glory that may come from my labors, and let everybody but Nettie forget me," he said. But Doctor Morgan had a slab of the common blue limestone of the hills--marble was not to be had--cut out for a headstone. The device upon it was a dove, the only inscription: "An alabaster box of very precious ointment."