Two or three men came down to the landing with wheelbarrows, and the boat was disencumbered of its gloomy load. The little girls sat down upon the shore, watching each load as it was trundled away. At length, the men brought the coffin in which their hearts rested, and laid it across a hand barrow. They arose silently, and followed it hand and hand. They turned into an orchard; the blossoming apple boughs drooped over the coffin as it passed under them. A host of birds made the fragrant air tremble with their songs. The single wheel of the hand-barrow crushed hundreds of wild flowers down in the tender grass. Once more it seemed like a dream to those young hearts. Surely, surely it could not be her grave they were approaching through all this labyrinth of blossoms! All at once they came into an open space. The world of flowers was left behind. Thickets and broken hillocks were on the right and left. A sweep of green sward fell gently down to the water; here the turf was torn up and mangled, and long deep ridges of fresh soil swept downward toward the shore. Some were heaped high with fresh mould and around them all the young grass lay trampled and dead. There was one deep trench open half the way down, into which a man leaped, while the others handed down the coffins ranged on either side the trench. With their hands clinging together, the children crept close to the brink of the abyss and looked down. One low cry and, in pale silence, they recoiled back to the coffin and sunk down by it, like twin flowers broken at the stem. An old man rose up from the trench, casting down his spade and dashing the soil from his hands, rejoicing that his task was over for that day; but his eyes fell upon the mournful group we have described. "What, another yet!" he muttered, with sullen discontent, as he moved forward. The little girls heard his approach and crept closer to the coffin. "Not there! oh, do not put her there!" cried Isabel, lifting her ashen face to the man. The pauper-sexton shook his head. "This is always the way," he muttered, "when the friends are allowed to come here, we are sure of trouble!" "Is there no other place? oh, do not put her with all them!" So pleaded Mary, rising to her feet, and taking hold of the old man's garments. "In all this island is there no room where one person can be buried alone?" "If you have a dollar to pay for the trouble--yes," answered the old man, softened by her distress. "A dollar!" The child turned away in utter despondency. Where on the wide earth was she to find a dollar? Isabel looked at her with mournful solicitude. A dollar! she would have given her young life for that little sum of money; but, alas! even her life would not procure so much. The old man stood gazing upon those little pale faces, the one so beautiful, the other vivid and wild with intense feeling. His heart was touched, and going back to the trench he took up his spade.