Close by was the stark church, with weather-beaten steeple, wherein half a dozen generations of Kempton women,--the men, for the most part, being at sea,--had worshipped the power of the storm, praying more for the escape from evil of the absent than for good to themselves. Beyond the church appeared the first headstones of the graveyard, the ground sloping away so rapidly that little more than the first row of slate slabs was visible from the street. With another shiver Mr. Farnsworth (for by that name the gentleman played his part upon this world's stage) got down from his carriage, fastened his horse, and walked toward the stones, whose rudely chiselled cherubs leered at him through their tawny rust of moss with a diabolic and sinister mirthfulness. As Mr. Farnsworth opened the sagging and unpainted gate of the enclosure, he became aware that the place was not empty. The head and shoulders of a human being were visible half-way down the hill, now and then obscured by the dull-reddish heap of earth thrown up from a partially dug grave. The visitor made his way down the irregular path, so steep as to be almost like a rude flight of stairs, and as he neared the worker, he suddenly perceived, with something of a shock, that the grave-digger was a woman. She worked as if familiar with her task, a man's battered hat pushed back from her forehead, over which her faded hair straggled in confusion, and across which certain grimy streaks bore witness that she had not escaped the primal curse, but labored in the sweat of her brow. Kempton's peculiarity in the matter of its sexton had not come to the knowledge of the stranger before, although he once had known the village life somewhat intimately. He regarded the woman with a double curiosity,--to see what she was like and to discover whether perchance he had ever known her. He paused as he neared her, resting one nicely gloved hand upon a tilted stone which perpetuated the memory and recorded the virtues of a captain who reposed in some chill cave under the Northern seas. Some slight sound caught the ear of the sexton, who until then had not perceived his approach; she looked up at him stolidly, and as stolidly looked down again, continuing her work without interruption. If there remained any consciousness of the strangeness of her occupation, or if there stirred any womanly shame to be so observed, they were betrayed by no outward sign. She threw up the dull-yellow earth at the feet of the new-comer as unmoved as if she had still only the dwellers in the graves as companions of her labor. "Don't you find this rather hard work, my good woman?" the gentleman inquired at length, more by way of breaking the silence than from any especial interest. "Yes," the sexton returned impassively, "it's hard enough." "It is rather unusual work for a woman, too," he said.