At last supper was set out, the cloths going in terraces according to the various heights of the tables; the tea-sets--willow and Coalport, the feather pattern, and the seaweed--looking like a china-shop; the urn, now rakishly dinted, presiding. People paid for their supper on these occasions, and expected to have as much as they could eat. Mrs. Marston had rashly told Martha that she could have what was left as a perquisite, which resulted later in stormy happenings. * * * * * From the nook on the hillside where the chapel stood, as Abel ran hastily down the slope--the harp jogging on his shoulders and looking like some weird demon that clung round his neck and possessed him--came a roar of sound. The brass band from Black Mountain was in possession of the platform. The golden windows shone comfortably in the cold spring evening, and Hazel ran towards them as she would have run towards the wide-flung onyx doors of faery. They arrived breathless and panting in the graveyard, where the tombstones seemed to elbow each other outside the shining windows, looking into this cave of saffron light and rosy joy as sardonically as if they knew that those within its shelter would soon be without, shelterless in the storm of death; that those who came in so gaily by twos and threes would go out one by one without a word. Hazel peered in. 'Fine raps they're having!' she whispered. 'All the band's there, purple with pleasure, and sweating with the music like chaps haying.' Abel looked in. 'Eh, dear,' he said, 'they're settled there for the neet. We'll ne'er get a squeak in. There's nought for Black Mountain Band'll stop at when they're elbow to elbow; they eggs each other on cruel, so they do! Your ears may be dinned and deafened for life, and you lost to the bee-keeping (for hear you must, or you'm done, with bees), but the band dunna care! There! Now they've got a hencore--that's to say, do it agen; and every time they get one of them it goes to their yeads, and they play louder.' 'Ah, but you play better,' said Hazel comfortingly; for Abel's voice had trembled, and Hazel must comfort grief wherever she found it, for grief implied weakness. 'I know I do,' he assented; 'but what can I do agen ten strong men?' At the mountain, as in the world of art and letters, it seemed that the artist must elbow and push, and that if he did not often stop his honeyed utterances to shout his wares he would not be heard at all. 'Dunna they look funny!' said Hazel with a giggle. 'All sleepy and quiet, like smoked bees. Is that the Minister? Him by the old sleepy lady--she's had more smoke than most!' 'Where?' 'There. He's got a black coat on and a kind face, sad-like.' 'Maybe if you took an axed him, he'd marry you--when the moon falls down the chapel chimney and rabbits chase the bobtailed sheep-dog!' 'I'm not for marrying anybody. Let's go in,' said Hazel.