The mason carved the memorial one column at a time, chiseling from left to right across the face of the stone. The first column took a week; the last took a day — his hand had learned the stone. For a season the whole inscription stood sharp and legible. Then the winter rains found the grain of the rock. The earliest-carved column, the one that had weathered the most freezes, that had been exposed to the elements longest while the mason worked his way across — its letters blurred first, then vanished entirely. The rest held. He returned in spring to recut what the rain had taken.