"Tell me," began Mistress Wayne, after a long silence. "The folk sleeping here—if they had tongues, thou said’st, Sexton; have they not, then? I thought—" she stopped, and lifted two puzzled eyes to his. The Sexton’s face grew wrapt, and his voice came dreamily. "Ye thowt—nay, ye knew—that they could frame to talk as weel as me an’ ye? An’ so they can, Mistress. Hark to th’ peewits up aboon us! There’s a dead maid’s sperrit wakes i’ each o’ yon drear birds. White breasts they’ve getten, for maidenhood, an’ black cloaks i’ sign o’ sorrow niver-ending." The little woman shivered and put her hand more closely into his. "The dead are rested, Sexton? Is’t not so?" she whispered. "Well, men sleep sound, body an’ sperrit, i’ a general way, an’ so do wedded women: ’tis the lassies who died afore wedlock, wanting it that cannot rest; ay, poor bairns, they like as they hunger an’ thirst for what they lacked, an’ nowt ’ull do for ’em. See ye, Mistress! How th’ teewits wheel an’ wheel, niver resting. An’ hark ye! There’s Mary Mother’s own wild sorrow i’ their screams." Mistress Wayne watched the birds glance white and black across the sun-rays. A score of them there might be, but each followed its own path, lonely, untiring, inconsolable. A strange light came into the little woman’s eyes, and after it a cloud of tears; like the voice of fellow-captives, in life’s prison-house, the plover’s cry struck home to her, disentangling memory from phantasy. Still as the graveyard stones she sat, and the Sexton, stealing a glance at her, knew that this woman stood, like himself, on the thin edge of life, seeing both worlds yet finding a resting-place in neither. "Will they never find peace, those white-breasted ghosts up yonder?" she whispered. "Is there no God to take pity on them? Sexton, is there no God in Heaven?" "I’ve heard tell on Him," said Witherlee slowly, "but I niver hed speech nor sign fro’ Him. Th’ slim ghosts I knaw, an’ th’ solid look o’ grave-planking I knaw—but I’m dim, Mistress, dim, when ye axe me of owt else. Nay, I’ve heard th’ teewits fret iver sin’ I war out o’ th’ cradle, an’ they’re fretting still; an’ when there comes a fresh Sexton to Marshcotes—I’ll be th’ first to mak him sweat at grave-digging, likely—why, there’ll be teewits wheeling still aboon his head." Her eyes were lifted piteously to his. "’Tis that keeps them sleeping—to die before wedlock, and never to feel a bairn’s mouth soft against their own. I shall be one of them soon, Sexton—very soon; it was to have been my wedding-day—" she passed a hand across her forehead, striving to pick up the thread that seemed for ever slipping from her grasp. "Happen—happen there’s a God hid somewhere," said Witherlee, in the tone of one who tells a fairy-story to a child. "I reckon, if there be, He’ll look thy way, Mistress, afore so long. Tak heart, an’—"