He desired, he said,
to see Dick's grave. Then he hoped to return to England.
Now Dick had made his plans. In a new country, where five years bring
amazing changes, it is easy to play pranks, even in churchyards. In
the San Lorenzo cemetery were many nameless graves, and the sexton
chanced to be an illiterate foreigner who could neither read nor
write. So Dick identified a forlorn mound as his last resting-place,
and told the sexton that a marble cross would be erected there under
his (Dick's) direction. Then he tipped the man, and bought a monument,
taking care to choose one sufficiently time-stained. There are scores
of such in every marble-worker's yard. Upon it were cut Dick's
initials, a date, and an appropriate text. Within three days of the
receipt of Mr. Carteret's letter, the cross was standing in the
cemetery. None knew or cared whence it came. Moreover, Dick had passed
unrecognised through the town where he had once ruffled it so gaily as
Lord Carteret. He had changed greatly, as he said, and for obvious
reasons he had never visited the mission town since his bogus death
and burial.
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