When a sick man dies he leaves his bed and his physic. His best friend asks him not to stay, and sweetheart and kindred concur in putting him out of doors, to be in a bed of clay, under the sky, come frost, or storm, or rain; a dumb outcast from fireside, tankard, and even the talk of others.

Tall Charles Fairfield, of the blue eyes, was, in due course, robed in his strange white suit, boxed up and screwed down, with a plated inscription over his cold breast, recounting his Christian and surnames, and the tale of his years.

If from that serene slumber, he could have been called again, the loud and exceeding bitter cry, the wild farewell of his poor little Ally, would have wakened him; but her loving Ry, her hero, slept on, with the unearthly light on his face till the coffin-lid hid it, and in the morning the athlete passed downstairs on men’s shoulders, and was slid reverently into a hearse, and went away to old Wyvern churchyard.

At ten o’clock in the morning, Charlie Fairfield was on the ground. Was old Squire Harry there to meet his son, and follow his coffin to the aisle of the ancient little church, and thence to his place in the churchyard?

Not he.

“Serve him right,” said the Squire, when he heard it. “I’m damned if he’ll lie in our vault; let him go to Parson Maybell, yonder, under the trees; I’ll not have him.”

So Charles Fairfield is buried there under the drip of those melancholy old trees, close by the gentle vicar and his good and pretty wife, over whom the grass has grown long, and the leaves of twenty summers have bloomed and fallen, and whose forlorn and beautiful little child was to be his bride, and is now his widow.

Harry Fairfield was there, with the undertaker’s black cloak over his well-knit Fairfield shoulders. He nodded to this friend and that in the crowd, gruffly. His face was lowering with thought, his eyes cast down, and sometimes raised in an abstracted glare to the face of some unobserved bystander for a few moments. Conspicuous above other uncovered heads was his. The tall stature, and statuesque proportions of his race would have marked him without the black mantle for the kinsman of the dead Fairfield.

Up to Wyvern House, after the funeral was over, went Harry. The old man, his hat in his hand, was bareheaded, on the steps; as he approached he nodded to his last remaining son. Three were gone now. A faint sunlight glinted on his old features; a chill northern air stirred his white locks. A gloomy, but noble image of winter the gaunt old man presented.

“Well, that’s over; where’s the lad buried?”

“Just where you—wished, sir, near Vicar Maybell’s grave, under the trees.”

The old Squire grunted an assent.

“The neighbours was there, I dare say?”

“Yes, sir, all—I think.”

“I shouldn’t wonder—they liked Charlie—they did. He’s buried up there alone—well, he deserved it. Was Dobbs there, from Craybourne? He was good to Dobbs. He gave that fellow twenty pun’ once, like a big fool, when Dobbs was druv to the wall, the time he lost his cattle; he was there——”

“Yes, I saw Dobbs there, sir, he was crying.”

“More fool Dobbs—more fool he,” said the Squire, and then came a short pause; “cryin’ was he “?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He’s a big fool—Dobbs is a fool.”

“A man cryin’ always looks a fool, the rum faces they makes when they’re blubbin’,” observed Harry. “Some o’ the Wykeford folk was there—Rodney was at his funeral.”

“Rodney? He didn’t like a bone in his skin. Rodney’s a bad dog. What brought Rodney to my son’s funeral?”

“He’s took up wi’ them preachin’ folk at Wykeford, I’m told, and he came down, I ’spose, to show the swaddlers what a forgivin’, charitable chap he is. Before he put on his hat, he come over and put out his hand to me.”

“And ye took it! ye know ye to............