“It's one of the foundations of my house.”
The axe fell from the workman's hand, and with a blanched face he turned to his fellows. It was too true. They were in the uppermost gallery; and the “cave” had taken place directly below the new house. After a pause, the “Fool” spoke again more feebly.
They brought her,--a wretched, fainting creature, with pallid face and streaming eyes,--and fell back as she bent her face above him.
“It was built for you, Annie darling,” he said in a hurried whisper, “and has been waiting up there for you and me all these long days. It's deeded to you, Annie; and you must--live there--with HIM! He will not mind that I shall be always near you; for it stands above--my grave.”
And he was right. In a few minutes later, when he had passed away, they did not move him, but sat by his body all night with a torch at his feet and head. And the next day they walled up the gallery as a vault; but they put no mark or any sign thereon, trusting, rather, to the monument, that, bright and cheerful, rose above him in the sunlight of the hill. And those who heard the story said, “This is not an evidence of death and gloom and sorrow, as are other monuments, but is a sign of life and light and hope, wherefore shall all know that he who lies under it is what men call--'a fool'.”
It was at a little mining-camp in the California Sierras that he first dawned upon me in all his grotesque sweetness.
I had arrived early in the morning, but not in time to intercept the friend who was the object of my visit. He had gone “prospecting,”--so they told me on the river,--and would not probably return until late in the afternoon. They could not say what direction he had taken; they could not suggest that I would be likely to find him if I followed. But it was the general opinion that I had better wait.
I looked around me. I was standing upon the bank of the river; and apparently the only other human beings in the world were my interlocutors, who were even then just disappearing from my horizon, down the steep bank, toward the river's dry bed. I approached the edge of the bank.
Oh! anywhere,--down with them on the river-bar, where they were working, if I liked. Or I could make myself at home in any of those cabins that I found lying round loose. Or perhaps it would be cooler and pleasanter for me in my friend's cabin on the hill. Did I see those three large sugar-pines, and, a little to the right, a canvas roof and chimney, over the bushes? Well, that was my friend's,--that was Dick Sylvester's cabin. I could stake my horse in that little hollow, and just hang round there till he came. I would find some books in the shanty. I could amuse myself with them or I could play with the baby.