“Take her away, father,” Margaret whispered. The priest led the woman to the house. She walked like one stunned. Margaret and West leaned over the grave, to look their last on Stukeley. They could see the water soaking into the linen, and above that the frayed body of Absalom, the handsome youth, caught in the thicket, as he rode. The town was noisy beyond them, two hundred yards away. Singing and shouting came from the Plaza. It seemed to Margaret to be the dirge the man would have chosen, this singing and shouting of men. “Is that gentleman’s service enough, sir?” West asked. “Quite enough,” he answered. “You heard him say that Mr. Stukeley had changed his religion?” “I’d feel easier if you’d say a few words, sir.” He spoke the few words. Then with the shovel he began to fill in the grave, from the foot. He placed many heavy stones among the earth, so that the rats might be foiled. When he had levelled the surface he heaped a cairn of stones at the head, and laid the lilies there. He went to a neighbouring garden, and dug up an arnotto rose-bush, to plant upon the grave. When this had been planted, the rites were over, he could do no more. They stood looking down at the grave for a moment, before they left the graveyard. The singing was loud behind them. In front of them, darkening under the breeze, was the bay, with the ships and sloops running in, distant some two or three miles. “Come, West,” Margaret said. “I must see after the wounded.” He took a last look at the grave, at the already drooping lilies and dejected rose-bush. “Good-bye, Stukeley,” he murmured. He stooped, and picked some rose-buds, and a little scrap of stone from the grave, putting them carefully in a pocket-case. “Now smoke, West,” he said. “And rub tobacco on your hands.” He reproached himself for having neglected his wounded for so long; but he knew that Tucket and Pain would look to them. He wished that the singing and shouting would stop. “Old Rose” and “The green grass grew” were not songs which the army in his mind had sung. Thermopylæ was not possible to an army which sang such songs. Pistol-shots marked the singing of each stanza; there were yells and cries. He thought he heard the screams of women. He saw two men come from a house with their arms full of plunder. “My God,” he said to himself bitterly. “Is Stukeley to check me even in death?” He drew his pistols again. “Come on, West,” he cried. He ran to the two looters. “What are you doing?” he said. “Take that stuff back where you got it.” “Get ter hell,” said the men. “You ain’t our captain. Who in hell are yer talking to?” Both men were drunk. One of them had been wounded in the head.