"It's yours," he said.
She looked at it in his palm for a long moment. Then she shook her head.
"Bury it in the empty one," she said. "Hurd can fill it back. I don't want it."
He closed his hand over it and nodded, and did not argue, and went back.
They put the boy in the oak box, and nailed it, and the four men carried it to the wagon, and Reverend Sedgwick said a few words, not over Eben Hale this time but over Lemuel Marten, nineteen years old, of Marion County, Kansas, who had died in a storm on the Halfmoon trail and had not been alone. Reverend Sedgwick had heard the whole of it by then, from Mr. Hurd, and he was not a man for long speeches. He said that the Lord knew His own by name, whatever name men put on a stone, and that it was a good thing, nonetheless, for men to get it right when they could. Then he said amen, and they said amen, and Zebulon Wex climbed up onto the wagon seat and gathered the reins.
The stone that said Eben Hale, Beloved Husband, lay on its back on the grass by the open grave. Mr. Hurd had pried it up that morning. He would take it back to his shop and grind the letters off, he said, and it could be used again for somebody who wanted it. Sabra looked at it lying there and found that she did not feel anything about it at all, and that this was a relief, and she let herself be relieved.
Tallis walked with her to the cemetery gate, where Deacon was tied.
"My mother sent this," he said, and took a folded paper from his coat. "She said to give it to you here, at the grave, and not before. I don't know what's in it. She wouldn't tell me."