The Return of the Gold Diggers.

They were now nearing the station at a mile back from The Front. Cameron had acquainted LeClare with the simple funeral arrangements he wished carried out as soon after their arrival as possible. One precaution he insisted must be taken, and that was, to allow no indication to appear of their possession of wealth. The significance of this request LeClare well understood. At the call of the station stop for The Front, the two men alighted, and hurrying forward, superintended the removal of the copper-lined casket beneath whose sealed cover was the body of the courageous woman that so lately had gone in search of the husband who now would live to do for those in kind who had done for the departed.

Cameron stood by the side of the rough box upon the platform, as the noise from the fast disappearing express train grew faint and died away in the distance. For a moment he was lost in thought. Knowing him to be in the company of Cameron, the keeper of the small depot approached LeClare, and with a jerk of his head toward a farm wagon and driver cautiously nearing, as if fearing to obtrude, he said in a hushed voice,—

“It’s Andy’s Dan. He’s been a-waitin’ fer ’im.”

Twice a week and sometimes oftener during the October month, so Cameron was afterward told by the neighbors, Andy’s Dan was seen regularly to drive back to the railroad station, and there remaining at a respectful distance, watch for a passenger who might alight from the through train from the West. Then seeing no familiar face to reward his coming, he would turn away and drive back to the farm at The Nole to come again another day.

Startled from his reverie by the remark of the station master, Cameron turned to see the conveyance drawn up by the platform at his side. Andy’s Dan alighted from the vehicle and clasped the outstretched hand of his bereaved brother in silence. Still without exchanging a word, they walked over to the side of the long box. Then, as if suddenly remembering, Dan looked into his brother’s face, a sad smile playing upon his features.

“We can take her home, Andy,” he said. “Bill Blakely told me to tell ye that when you come.”

In the centre of the burying-ground, set back from the roadway and raising its spire heavenward above the tombstones at either side, the church at The Front reposes among the graves. One by one these monuments had been reared, till now they marked a place where a loved one had been taken to rest from each of the families at The Front.

A mound of freshly dug earth, thrown up upon the sod in one corner of the inclosure, told of a newly made grave. A cold November rain had been falling, accompanied by a chilling wind, which came in fitful gusts. The over ripe, deadened stalks of the golden-rod beat against the board fence, rapping at intervals like the weather strips upon a deserted house. The drops of water fell aslant from the eaves of the church roof, and a horse, meagrely covered, shivered beneath the shed at the rear. Bill Blakely had placed in a convenient corner of the shed the pick and shovel he had been using, then backing his horse from under cover, he drove over to the farm at The Nole. Information had spread among the neighbors that Cameron had returned to The Front bringing with him the remains of his wife. No further news were they able to gather, but to Davy Simpson, Angus Ferguson, Bill Blakely and a few others, Cameron had sent a special message, saying that as friends to himself and the departed he wished them to be present at the funeral to take place from The Nole the following afternoon.

Meanwhile Cameron had also dispatched his friend LeClare with Dan as his driver, bearing a note to his lawyer friend up at the county village. To them the import of the note appeared to be nothing more than a request for his friend to attend upon the following day, but later, at the farm, as he saw the lawyer place upon the coffin in the front room a beautiful wreath of the purest white lilies, LeClare knew that Andy’s orders had been telegraphed to the city. The best undertaker the county afforded was in charge of the details, with instructions to slight nothing in the arrangements and the assurance that his bill of expenses would be promptly met.

Cameron greeted his friends by a cordial grasp of the hand. A new dignity of manner impressed itself upon his old neighbors. His bearing at this time was that of a man of a great reserve force, softened through the medium of sorrow. Kindly he thanked the few friends who had come to him, and together upon the arrival of the clergyman they assembled in the front room to fulfill the last request of the departed—that, surrounded by her friends and family, her pastor should offer a prayer, and then in the graveyard by the small church near her home they should lay her at rest.