Such grumblings broke out into storm; and when Mr. and Mrs. Kirby descended into the hollow which their friends feared would be their tomb, they found the whole remaining population of the place blocking up the street before the doctor’s house, and smashing his phials, and making a pile of his pill-boxes and little drawers, as they were handed out of his surgery window. A woman had brought a candle at the moment to fire the pill-boxes: and she kneeled down to apply the flame. The people had already broken bottles enough to spill a good deal of queer stuff; and some of this stuff was so queer as to blaze up, half as high as the houses, as quick as thought. The flame ran along the ground, and spread like magic. The people fled, supposing this the doings of the comet and the doctor together. Off they went, up and down, and into the houses whose doors were open. But the woman’s clothes were on fire. She would have run too; but Mr. Kirby caught her arm, and his firm grasp made her stand, while Mrs. Kirby wrapped her camlet cloak about the part that was on fire. It was so quickly done—in such a moment of time, that the poor creature was not much burned; not at all dangerously; and the new pastor was at once informed of the character of the charge he had undertaken. That very evening Warrender was sent through the village, as crier, to give a notice, to which every ear was open. Mr. Kirby having had medical assurance that it was injurious to the public health that more funerals should take place in the churchyard, and that the bodies should lie unburied, would next day, bury the dead above the brow, on a part of Furzy Knoll, selected for the purpose. For anything unusual about this proceeding, Mr. Kirby would be answerable, considering the present state of the village of Bleaburn. A waggon would pass through the village at six o’clock the next morning; and all who had a coffin in their houses were requested to bring it out, for solemn conveyance to the new burial ground: and those who wished to attend the interment must be on the ground at eight o’clock. All ears were open again the next morning, when the cart made its slow progress down the street; and some went out to see. It was starlight: and from the east came enough of dawn to show how the vehicle looked with the pall thrown over it. Now and then, as it passed a space between the houses, a puff of wind blew aside the edge of the pall, and then the coffins were seen within, ranged one upon another,—quite a load of them. It stopped for a minute at the bottom of the street; and it was a relief to the listeners to hear Warrender tell the driver that there were no more, and that he might proceed up to the brow. After watching the progress of the cart till it could no longer be distinguished from the wall of grey rock along which it was ascending, those who could be spared from tending the sick put on such black as they could muster, to go to the service.