The pool upon the grave had soaked away into the
ground, and in its place was a hollow. The disturbed
earth was washed over the grass and pathway in the
guise of the brown mud he had already seen, and it
spotted the marble tombstone with the same stains.
Nearly all the flowers were washed clean out of the
ground, and they lay, roots upwards, on the spots whither
they had been splashed by the stream.
Troy's brow became heavily contracted. He set his
teeth closely, and his compressed lips moved as those of
one in great pain. This singular accident, by a strange
confluence of emotions in him, was felt as the sharpest
sting of all. Troy's face was very expressive, and any
observer who had seen him now would hardly have
believed him to be a man who had laughed, and sung,
and poured love-trifles into a woman's ear. To curse
his miserable lot was at first his impulse, but even that
lowest stage of rebellion needed an activity whose
absence was necessarily antecedent to the existence of the
morbid misery which wrung him. The sight, coming
as it did, superimposed upon the other dark scenery of
the previous days, formed a sort of climax to the whole
panorama, and it was more than he could endure.
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