)
Turning back, he approached the heap of boulders that covered the
grave of Edward and Alix Crown. No visible sign of the cleft in
the surface of the rock remained. Six huge boulders, arranged in
a row, rose above a carefully made bed of stones held in place by
a low, soundly mortared wall.
Chiselled on one of the end boulders was the name of Alix Windom
Crown, with the date of her birth and her death, with the line:
"Rock of Ages Cleft for Me." Below this inscription was the recently
carved name of Edward Joseph Crown, Born July 7, 1871. Died March
22, 1895. Three words followed this. They were "Abide With Me."
II
Thane stood for a long time looking at the pile. He was not
sentimental. His life had been spent in an irreverent city, among
people hardened by pleasure or coarsened by greed. His thoughts
as he stood there were not of the unhappy pair who reposed beneath
those ugly rocks; they were of the far-off tragedy that had brought
them to this singular resting-place. The fact that this was a grave,
sacred in the same sense that his father's grave in Woodlawn was
supposed to be sacred to him and to his mother, was overlooked in
the silent contemplation of what an even less sophisticated person
might have been justified in describing as a "freak." Nothing
was farther from his mind, however, than the desire or impulse to
be disrespectful.
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