There was but scant attendance at the burial of Jane Holder. The men she had known, and with whom she had laughed, danced, jested, and sung, under the veil of night, for obvious reasons could not attend in open daylight such rites, simple and unobtrusive though they were. In like manner, Jane's female associates were chary about being in evidence. Moreover, such irresponsible human butterflies are said to have morbid fears of death, and this particular case was surely nature's grimmest reminder. Lizzie Trott went, of course, and Mandy and Jake walked behind her, solemnly and sedately self-righteous. The spot set aside for Jane's remains to repose in was in an unused, weed-overgrown corner of the public cemetery--the spot decided on by the town clerk, who granted the permit at the price required alike for respected or unrespected interment. The undertaker's men, in a perfunctory way, did the work of lowering the flower-covered casket into the damp red clay which was intermixed with round, prehistoric pebbles. The white sexton of the cemetery, an old man, bowed and gray, took charge of the filling of the grave with earth and shaping a mound on the surface. The hearse, the black-plumed horses, and the undertaker's men went away. Jake and Mandy again fell in behind Lizzie and they walked down the hill to the deserted house. "I cooked enough fer yo' supper, Mis' Trott," Mandy said at the gate. "Jake say dat I mustn't come back ter you any mo'." "Very well, Mandy," Lizzie said, wearily. "Good-by." "Good-by, Mis' Trott. Me 'n' Jake bofe sorry fer you." "Yas'm, we is," Jake intoned, doffing his hat and sliding his flat feet backward. The interior of the house was still and shadowy. Lizzie sat down in that best dark dress of hers in the parlor. She was beginning to pity herself, for it was all so very, very terrible. How could she go on living there? And yet, whither was she to go? She rose. She started up the stairs with the strange intention of again visiting John's old room, but in the hall she stopped. "How silly!" she thought. "What am I going up there for?" The slanting rays of the lowering sun fell through the narrow side-lights of the door and lay on the floor at her feet. She shuddered. It would soon be night again and how could she pass the dark hours?--for something told her that she would not sleep soundly. She had never felt less like sleeping, though she had not lost consciousness for two days and two nights. Then a self-protective idea entered her confused reflections, and she acted on it. She found among her belongings a piece of broad black ribbon, and, forming a bow and streamers of it, she hung it on the front door-knob, together with a card on which she had written, "Not at home." That would keep people away--her friends and Jane's--and she was in no mood to entertain any one. The ribbon and card would speak of John, of Dora, of Jane, and the boldest would respect their significance.