The next afternoon, when the beck had subsided to its normal flow, Jan Straw's body was found in a pool and taken to Greystones. All the village, and shepherds from distant cots among the hills, were bidden to the funeral. Lucy and Barbara had no time for tears. Mistress Lynn would not have it said that she had not shown honour to her old servant, and, two days before the burial, the sisters were busy from dawn to dark baking arval cakes to be given to the guests. These little cakes were made of wheaten meal, and taken piously home, to be eaten in remembrance of the dead. The ceremony was a solemn one in the mill-house. The old man, Peter's father, ate the arval cake with one hand over his eyes, and his figure bent as though in prayer. Peter's mother wept behind her handkerchief, and nibbled a crumb of it, saying softly: "In memory o' thee, Jan Straw." Peter, too, was not unmoved. The simplicity and pathos of the act brought tears to his honest eyes, of which he was not ashamed. Later on John Fleming sat at one side of the fire smoking, Mistress Fleming at the other side knitting, and Peter lay on the rug between them, telling stories of Oxford, when the old man suddenly took his pipe from his mouth, and said: "I wish you'd marry, Peter." "Marry! Good heavens!" "I want you to settle down. Once I had other views. I thought I'd live till you could read the burial service over me--earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes, in sure and certain hope--you know how it goes. Beautiful words, them! They kind o' sum up the big and the little o' life. Well, but now----" He paused, took out of his pocket a large square of linen and wiped his brow. "I'm sorry to have disappointed you, father." "I kind o' expected it," replied the miller. "I used to say to your mother, 'the lad's not the right cut for a cassock. He'd split the skirt o' it with his long legs, rax it down the back with wrestling, and carry puppies and kitlins in the pockets.' But she--she didn't ken you as well as I did. 'Leave him alone,' she said, 'the lad's all right. You can't put an old head on young shoulders.' I wasn't for believing her. 'Zookers!' said I, 'I's an old man, but I's got a young head on my old shoulders. The lad takes after me, that he does!" "I was hoping," Peter began, but the miller interrupted him. "Don't be hoping anything, or pluming yourself up that I didn't mind. I've wished ever since--since--you ken when--that I'd brought you up to be a decent honest miller like myself, and had knocked them eddication notions out o' my head and your's too. They've done nowther on us any good." "If you'd only consent to my going away--not out of the country--but to London, say, I would do something to take the sting out of your disappointment. You'd be proud of me yet." His mother laid a gentle hand on his arm. "Whist, lad," she whispered, "list to thy dadda."