“You bide a bit, miss, and you shall hear the whole. Well, by that time 'twas too late for me to slip away, and I was bound to scrooge up into the elbow of this nick here, and try not to breathe, as nigh as might be, and keep my Lammas cough down; for I never see a face more full of malice and uncharity. However, he come on as straight as a arrow, holding his long chin out, like this, as if he gotten crutches under it, as the folk does with bad water. A tall man, as tall as the Captain a'most, but not gifted with any kind aspect. He trampsed over the general graves, like the devil come to fetch their souls out; but when he come here to the 'holy ring,' he stopped short, and stood with his back to me. I could hear him count the seven graves, as pat as the shells of oysters to pay for, and then he said all their names, as true, from the biggest to the leastest one, as Betsy Bowen could 'a done it, though none of 'em got no mark to 'em. Oh, the poor little hearts, it was cruel hard upon them! And then my lady in the middle, making seven. So far as I could catch over his shoulder, he seemed to be quite a-talking with her--not as you and I be, miss, but a sort of a manner of a way, like.” “And what did he seem to say? Oh, Jacob, how long you do take over it!” “Well, he did not, miss; that you may say for sartain. And glad I was to have him quick about it; for he might have redooced me to such a condition--ay, and I believe a' would, too, if onst a' had caught sight of me--as the parish might 'a had to fight over the appintment of another sexton. And so at last a' went away. And I were that stiff with scrooging in this cornder--” “Is that all? Oh, that comes to nothing. Surely you must have more to tell me? It may have been some one who knew our names. It may have been some old friend of the family.” “No, miss, no! No familiar friend; or if he was, he were like King David's. He bore a tyrannous hate against 'e, and the poison of asps were under his lips. In this here hattitude he stood, with his back toward me, and his reins more upright than I be capable of putting it. And this was how he held up his elbow and his head. Look 'e see, miss, and then 'e know as much as I do.” Mr. Rigg marched with a long smooth step--a most difficult strain for his short bowed legs--as far as the place he had been pointing out; and there he stood with his back to me, painfully doing what the tall man had done, so far as the difference of size allowed. It was not possible for me to laugh in a matter of such sadness; and yet Jacob stood, with his back to me, spreading and stretching himself in such a way, to be up to the dimensions of the stranger, that--low as it was--I was compelled to cough, for fear of fatally offending him.