Then with one swift sweep of her other hand she struck his handsome face full with the fading lilies she still held. "Coward!" she said. "Go! your task is done!" The flowers broke softly on his warm flesh and blood, leaving no mark, but her words seemed to shrivel him; he slunk away. She watched him disappear down the hillside, then with a sob she flung herself face down on the short turf, crushing the lilies to their death, and cried as though her heart would break. CHAPTER IX The little village of Dinas was in a turmoil. Considering its small size, and the extreme peace of its situation happed round by everlasting hills, and so cuddled close to the very heart of calm creation, it held an extraordinary capability for fuss. The hot Celtic blood would get into the hot Celtic brain at the slightest provocation, and it had risen from the sub-normal of rural life to the fever-heat of a revolution over a baby whom some one had refused to baptize, and some one else had declined to bury. The rector, relying on the Middle Ages, had pointed to the nettle-grown corner reserved for those whose salvation was doubtful. The whole Calvinistic body, forgetful of election and predestination, had fled as one man from the authority of the Bible to that of the Burials Act. Radical religion and religious radicalism had once more met in grips, and the guarantors of the little telegraph station in the village breathed freely by reason of the wires that were sent, and that came from the princes and powers of darkness and light all over the country. The result was, of course, that foregone conclusion of these later days--a compromise. The churchyard belonged to the parish, the burial service to the Church. And so, with a curious falter at its innermost heart because of the absence of the rector's familiar surplice and biretta, the village had signalised its victory by a triumphal following of Gwen's baby to the grave, not of its fathers, but its mothers. As they gathered round the coffin which looked so tiny far away down in the greasy, black earth, the sound of "Day of wrath, that dreadful day," sung by the rector at his usual evening service, floated out from the church to join Morris Pugh's indignant militant prayer to the Almighty; but the peaceful little dead child slept undisturbed by either.