It
pleased him, too, that his body should be kept unburied three
days--saying that he would then arise and go about preaching, and
that duty, too, she would as silently and with as little question
perform. Moreover, he would preach his own funeral sermon on the
Sunday before Rufe's day, and a curious crowd gathered to hear
him. The Red Fox was led from jail. He stood on the porch of the
jailer's house with a little table in front of him. On it lay a
Bible, on the other side of the table sat a little pale-faced old
woman in black with a black sun-bonnet drawn close to her face. By
the side of the Bible lay a few pieces of bread. It was the Red
Fox's last communion--a communion which he administered to himself
and in which there was no other soul on earth to join save that
little old woman in black. And when the old fellow lifted the
bread and asked the crowd to come forward to partake with him in
the last sacrament, not a soul moved. Only the old woman who had
been ill-treated by the Red Fox for so many years--only she, of
all the crowd, gave any answer, and she for one instant turned her
face toward him.
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