“Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of His great mercy to take unto Himself the soul of our dear brother here departed, we therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope—”

The clods fell; the familiar rite ended.  There was a smell of earth and bruised grass.  Dinah Thorn looked down into her husband’s grave; and her child of three, clutching tight his mother’s black-gloved hand, peeped fearfully into the abyss that had swallowed his father.  Suddenly the infant appeared to realize his loss, and howled with all his little heart.

Anon every man went to his own house, while Mr. Lethbridge began to fill the grave.  His friend the blacksmith had been one of the bearers.  He, too, stayed behind; and now Chugg lighted his pipe, and sat upon a tomb, and watched the sexton.  Once more they played the part of chorus.

“’Tis a wonder to see you with the spade again.”

“As to that, I’m past it—have been these three year—but this particular job—well, somehow, p. 178Jonas had got a feeling that he’d cussed the chap so often in life that he couldn’t dig his pit decent; an’ I be clever yet for such an old blid, so I comed out o’ my well-earned rest.  Can’t say as it hurt my mind to dig, though my rheumatics will smart for it come to-morrow.”

The earth dropped from the shovel, and the coffin beneath rumbled to the thud.

Old Lethbridge worked slowly, and stopped often to talk.

“’Twas always said he’d got a careless way of throwing elms.  An’ now an elm have throwed him.  A great tree in Widecombe Park falled when he was looking t’other way, an’ a bough scat his brains out.  An’ now he’m coffined in elm, an’ never good wood held a worse man.”

The blacksmith smoked and shook his head.

“Yet the Church feels no doubts of him.  Have ’e ever marked the cocksureness of the parsons?  ’Tis that I marvels at!  ‘Sure and sartain hope’ be the words.  When they buried Sam Pridham, the poacher—him as beat his wife and drinked the boots an’ shoes off his children’s feet—parson was just so dead positive ’bout it as when he put away my old woman, who was a holy saint o’ God, bar her temper.  How can us know that it have pleased the A’mighty to take to Hisself the soul of this here Amos Thorn?”

p. 179“We can’t be sure, and for my part I ban’t,” said the other.  “We know mighty little of any man except this: that king and tinker breed the same fashion o’ worms come they die.  The chap down there was a liar, an’ he won Dinah Hannaford from my son by a wicked trick.  He told her falsehoods—’twas this dust I’m covering with............