This we promised to do, for a merrier, better-hearted lot of fellows it would be hard to find.

To meet them was to feel a warm glow of human comradeship.

Healthy, normal, happy fellows, enjoying their work as men should, and taking life as it came with sane, unconscious gusto; it was a tonic encounter to be in their company.
They were grave-diggers, engaged in renovating the village churchyard! Yes! and, said our hostess, they were making it like a garden! It had been long neglected and become disgracefully overgrown with weeds and bushes, but now they were trimming it up in fine style.

They were cemetery experts from Batavia way, and the job was to cost sixteen hundred dollars.

But it was worth it, for indeed they were making it look like a garden! Presently we stepped over to the churchyard.