At last, laying aside his rifle, he knelt down, and, unable to see, felt with his hands the surface of the stone. “Ah!” he exclaimed, recognizing on the back the dints poor Joe’s tool had made. Next he struck a match, and, guarding it with his hands, read the inscription. The match went out before he had quite done. He lit another.
“Ah me!” he murmured; “this is a strange world.” And he read, “Of such are the kingdom of heaven.” “What a sad business!”
He lifted his hand to cast aside the still-burning match. At this instant, while still on his knees, there was a flash of light. He heard no sound, but fell across the graves, motionless.
Meanwhile, Jack, with swift feet, eager for home, trotted down the broken road, and, to his disgust, finding no porcupines, struck easily into the cross-road, and, passing the boulder, moved away along the forest-track. At last the way became less and less plain; but, trusting by habit to his sense of direction, he pushed on into the wood.
A little surprised not to meet his friend, he concluded that he might possibly have missed his way. For the first time the boy hesitated. Then, as he stood, he heard a rifle, and, sure at once that Carington must have shot something, he ran with greater speed. In a few moments the tangle of undergrowth checked his pace. Some five minutes or more went by, and he saw a flare of light. Thinking it strange, he hurried his steps, and then, of a sudden, stood still.
The woman had carefully approached her prey, ax in hand, and at last saw, as she strained her vision, that Carington’s rifle lay out of his reach. Reassured, she went on more boldly. Looking around, and seeing no one near, she calmly lifted the man’s head, and let it fall. This seemed enough. She took the roll of money, and began to disengage the watch-guard; but, unable to release the catch in the buttonhole of his jacket, struck one of the matches which, as usual, she had in her pocket, caught up a scrap of birch-bark, and, lighting it, saw by the flare how to undo the chain. As she dropped the watch into her bosom, a long gasp broke from the chest of the man beneath her.
“He ain’t done for,” she exclaimed, and rose to her feet, the roll of burning birch in one hand, the ax in the other. She stepped back a pace, cast down the blazing bark, which flashed forth anew as she let her right hand slip up the handle and lifted the ax.