One day I was coming back from burying a mouse, and I saw a "flying
watchman" beetle lying quite stiff and dead, as I thought, with his legs
stretched out, and no friends; so I put him on the bier at once, and put
the blue velvet over him, and drew him to the place where the mouse's
grave was. When I took the pall off and felt him, and turned him over
and over, he was still quite rigid, so I felt sure he was dead, and
began to dig his grave; but when I had finished and went back to the
bier, the flying watchman was just creeping over the wheel. He had only
pretended to be dead, and had given me all that trouble for nothing.
When first I became a Brother of Pity, I thought I would have a
graveyard to bury all the creatures in, but afterwards I changed my mind
and settled to bury them all near wherever I found them. But I got some
bits of white wood, and fastened them across each other with bits of
wire, and so marked every grave.
At last there were lots of them dotted about the fields and woods I
knew. I remembered to whom most of them belonged, and even if I had
forgotten, it made a very good game, to pretend to be a stranger in the
neighbourhood, and then pretend to be somebody else, talking to myself,
and saying, "Wherever you see those little graves some poor creature has
been buried by the Brothers of Pity.
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