After following Left Fork of Troublesome for a few miles, they went up a smaller branch, and then crossed a mountain. As they reached the "gap" in the ridge and looked down on the far side, a faint thread of song came up to them from the valley, increasing in volume as they descended; until, as they reached the burying-ground, on a little rise beside the creek, it became a rich, minor, hauntingly beautiful chorus of men's voices. Hundreds of people were already gathered, some seated on rows of planks laid across logs in the shade, others wandering about on the outskirts. There were a number of small, latticed grave-houses; and with their backs to these, and facing the crowd, sat five preachers, on a special plank under a spreading beech. When the party from The Forks took seats on a rear plank, Fult achieved a seat beside Isabel, only to have her, at the last moment, change, leaving Lethie between them. She did not see the angry glance he turned upon her. As they were seated, the singing ceased, and one of the preachers, an old man with a kind face, arose and announced that this crowd was "mustered" and this meeting held for the purpose of "doing up" the funerals of four deceased persons--Elhannon Bowles, who had passed away the previous summer with the fever; his month-old child, who had died the year before; his old father, dead five years; and his mother, dead eight years. Short biographies were then given of the four, beginning with the infant child, who had "gone home to glory with the choking-disease afore sin had ever smirched the whiteness of hits soul"; of the old father, who had "drapped dead all unthoughted" one day in the cornfield, ill-prepared, it was to be feared, for what awaited him; of the old mother, who had "allus fit the good fight, and passed on a-shouting"; and, finally, of Elhannon, whose future status would have been shrouded in some doubt had it not been for a vision of a "shining nag," which brightened his last moments and left hope in the bosoms of his bereaved widow and seven orphant offsprings.