"We mustn't. That would frighten Mamma." "Well, then, we'll have to go straight through." They went, slowly, between the rows of mounds, along a narrow path of yellow clay that squeaked as their boots went in and out. Roddy held her hand. They took care not to tread on the graves. Every step brought them nearer to the funeral. They hadn't pointed it out to each other. They had pretended it wasn't there. Now it was no use pretending; they could see the coffin. "Roddy--I can't--I can't go past the funeral." "We've got to." He looked at her with solemn eyes, wide open in his beautiful face. He was not really frightened, he was only trying to be because he liked it. They went on. The tight feeling under her waist had gone; her body felt loose and light as if it didn't belong to her; her knees were soft and sank under her. Suddenly she let go Roddy's hand. She stared at the funeral, paralysed with fright. At the end of the path Mamma and Aunt Lavvy stood and beckoned to them. Aunt Lavvy was coming towards them, carrying her white flower cross. They broke into a stumbling, nightmare run. The bare clay plain stretched on past the place where Mamma and Aunt Lavvy had turned. The mounds here were big and high. They found Mamma and Aunt Lavvy standing by a very deep and narrow pit. A man was climbing up out of the pit on a ladder. You could see a pool of water shining far down at the bottom. Mamma was smiling gently and kindly at the man and asking him why the grave was dug so deep. He said, "Why, because this 'ere lot and that there what you've come acrost is the pauper buryin' ground. We shovel 'em in five at a time this end." Roddy said, "Like they did in the great plague of London." "I don't know about no plague. But there's five coffins in each of these here graves, piled one atop of the other." Mamma seemed inclined to say more to the grave-digger; but Aunt Lavvy frowned and shook her head at her, and they went on to where a path of coarse grass divided the pauper burying ground from the rest. They were now quite horribly near the funeral. And going down the grass path they saw another that came towards them; the palled coffin swaying on headless shoulders. They turned from it into a furrow between the huddled mounds. The white marble columns gleamed nearer among the black trees. They crossed a smooth gravel walk into a crowded town of dead people. Tombstones as far as you could see; upright stones, flat slabs, rounded slabs, slabs like coffins, stone boxes with flat tops, broken columns; pointed pillars. Rows of tall black trees. Here and there a single tree sticking up stiffly among the tombstones. Very little trees that were queer and terrifying. People in black moving about the tombstones. A broad road and a grey chapel with pointed gables. Under a black tree a square plot enclosed by iron railings.