He was--" His breath caught in a sob and choked him.

"He was--a Grand Supreme Herald." Bibbs had divined aright.
"Dust to dust," said the minister, under the gaunt trees; and at that Sheridan shook convulsively from head to foot.

All of the black group shivered, except Bibbs, when it came to "Dust to dust." Bibbs stood passive, for he was the only one of them who had known that thought as a familiar neighbor; he had been close upon dust himself for a long, long time, and even now he could prophesy no protracted separation between himself and dust.

The machine-shop had brought him very close, and if he had to go back it would probably bring him closer still; so close--as Dr.Gurney predicted--that no one would be able to tell the difference between dust and himself.

And Sheridan, if Bibbs read him truly, would be all the more determined to "make a man" of him, now that there was a man less in the family.