He remembered this place as having struck him by its silence and its loneliness, on the occasion of his first visit to Dibbledean. He now observed with some surprise that it was astir with human beings, and noisy with the clamor of gossiping tongues. All the inhabitants of the cottages on either side of the road were out in their front gardens. All the townspeople who ought to have been walking about the principal streets, seemed to be incomprehensibly congregated in this one narrow little lane. What were they assembled here to do? What subject was it that men and women--and even children as well--were all eagerly talking about? Without waiting to hear, without questioning anybody, without appearing to notice that he was stared at (as indeed all strangers are in rural England), as if he were walking about among a breeched and petticoated people in the character of a savage with nothing but war paint on him, Mat steadily and rapidly pursued his way down the lane to Joanna Grice’s cottage. “Time enough,” thought he, “to find out what all this means, when I’ve got quietly into the house I’m bound for.” As he approached the cottage, he saw, standing at the gate, what looked, to his eyes, like two coaches--one, very strange in form: both very remarkable in color. All about the coaches stood solemn-looking gentlemen; and all about the solemn-looking gentlemen, circled inquisitively and excitably, the whole vagabond boy-and-girl population of Dibbledean. Amazed, and even bewildered (though he hardly knew why) by what he saw, Mat hastened on to the cottage. Just as he arrived at the garden paling, the door opened, and from the inside of the dwelling there protruded slowly into the open air a coffin carried on four men’s shoulders, and covered with a magnificent black velvet pall. Mat stopped the moment he saw the coffin, and struck his hand violently on the paling by his side. “Dead!” he exclaimed under his breath. “A friend of the late Miss Grice’s?” asked a gently inquisitive voice near him. He did not hear. All his attention was fixed on the coffin, as it was borne slowly over the garden path. Behind it walked two gentlemen, mournfully arrayed in black cloaks and hat-bands. They carried white handkerchiefs in their hands, and used them to wipe--not their eyes--but their lips, on which the balmy dews of recent wine-drinking glistened gently.