"He died as a son of mine should die," said the squatter, gleaning a
hollow consolation from so unnatural an exultation: "a dread to his
enemy to the last, and without help from the law! Come, children; we
have the grave to make, and then to hunt his murderer."
The sons of the squatter set about their melancholy office, in silence
and in sadness. An excavation was made in the hard earth, at a great
expense of toil and time, and the body was wrapped in such spare
vestments as could be collected among the labourers. When these
arrangements were completed, Ishmael approached the seemingly
unconscious Esther, and announced his intention to inter the dead. She
heard him, and quietly relinquished her grasp of the corpse, rising in
silence to follow it to its narrow resting place. Here she seated
herself again at the head of the grave, watching each movement of the
youths with eager and jealous eyes. When a sufficiency of earth was
laid upon the senseless clay of Asa, to protect it from injury, Enoch
and Abner entered the cavity, and trode it into a solid mass, by the
weight of their huge frames, with an appearance of a strange, not to
say savage, mixture of care and indifference.
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