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"Oh, yes—the way it happened—I doubt if it was ac—" he broke off his sentence, and Abner did not press the conclusion. Mr. Belshue's death, too, dwindled beside the great loss of Railroad Jones.

At the house Abner finally did not dare go in and present himself to Adelaide. He was too nearly in the opposite camp to do that. He was in the opposite camp. He stood outside the Jones gate with a great crowd which had filled the yard and overflowed into the street. He wished from his soul he could take Adelaide in his arms and tell her how he grieved for her, but—that was impossible.

He never saw Adelaide until the funeral procession came out of the manor, through the greak oaken doors. Adelaide and her mother came immediately behind the huge black-upholstered coffin. The pallbearers staggered under their burden. The mother and daughter were supported by other women of the village.

The undertaker, a tall man of professional solemnity, walked ahead, making a passage through the crowd to the black funeral car outside the gate.

Presently more men stepped up to help lift the coffin into the hearse. Adelaide and her mother got into a car behind the hearse. The other cars and buggies began arranging themselves down the street, the drivers directing one another in low voices and with unaccustomed patience and charity.

Abner watched Adelaide's car move away, up the rocky lane toward the cemetery; the head of a long, slow procession through the cold sunshine.

From across the valley in which the village lay came the first solitary clang of a tolling bell. A long pause, and another church bell from another section of the hamlet struck its note. All of the poor churches in the village tolled for the passing of the magnate. Somehow, under this melacholy tolling, Abner's heart broke; the pity, the helplessness, the hopelessness of it all! His sobs squeezed up past his tight aching throat. He tried desperately to control