’A Langford cannot be married by banns,’ he said. ’And I’m not going to have everyone in church sniggering when our names are called.’ As he went along the road, head down, muttering, the face of Hillary haunted him—pale with sickness, refined, spiritualised by suffering, not the suffering of the body but of the mind. He was strangely like Blandina in her last sickness, and there were tones in his voice of entreaty that brought back to Langford memories of his sister and of his mother. He arrived at the church before the rector and the rural dean. The latter was taking refreshment at the parsonage a mile away. Would Nanspian be there? He did not wish to meet him, but he would not be away lest it should be said he had feared to meet him. Nanspian was not there. He had forgotten all about the visitation. ’He wants a deal of reminding,’ said the clerk, who had unlocked the church. ’He forgets most things worse than ever since his stroke.’ Langford disengaged himself from the clerk and entered the church—a noble building, of unusual beauty. In the nave at his feet was a long slate stone, and the name TAVERNER LANGFORD. He knew very well that the stone was there, with its inscription and the date 1635; but as he stood looking at it an uncomfortable feeling came over him, as if he were standing at the edge of his own grave. He was alone in the church. The air was chill and damp, and smelt of decay. The dry-rot was in the pews. The slates were speckled, showing that the church roof was the haunt of bats, who flew about in flights when darkness set in. If it were cold and damp in the church, what must it be in the vault below? He knew what was there—the dust of many Langfords, one or two old lead coffins crushed down by their own weight. And he knew that some day he would lie there, and the ’Taverner Langford’ on the stone would apply to him as well as to his ancestor. How horrible to be there at night, with the cold eating into him, and the smell of mildew about him, and the bats fleeting above him! The thought made him uneasy, and he went out of the church into the sunlight, thinking that he would pay a woman to scour the stone of the bat-stains which befouled it. He had never dreamed of doing this before, but when he considered that he must himself lie there, he took a loathing to the bats, and an indignation at the vault-covering stone being disfigured by them. He walked through the coarse grass to where his sister was laid. She was not buried in the family vault. Nanspian had not wished it. The clerk came to him. ’Mr. Nanspian had a double-walled grave made,’ said the clerk, who was also sexton. ’Folks laughed, I mind, when he ordered it, and said he was sure to marry again—a fine lusty man like he. But they were wrong. He never did. He has bided true to her memory.’ ’I would never have forgiven him had he done other,’ said Langford. ’I reckon you never forgive him, though he has not,’ said the solemn clerk.