"Ay, it looks bad—it looks bad, an’ I’m noan for denying it. Owd Witherlee war cracking o’ summat o’ th’ sort, too, not mony minutes sin’. Well, there’s none i’ th’ moorside but what wishes well to th’ Waynes, if it come to a tussle—though I wodn’t hev th’ Lean Man hear me say ’t." The folk were gathering meanwhile in the graveyard. Some came in by the gate at the village end, others by the wicket that opened on the moor. All wore the air of sober merriment which a burying never fails to bring to the faces of the moor-folk; all clustered about the vault, and chattered like so many magpies, and turned to ask Sexton Witherlee, when he came from feeding his robin, a hundred silly questions as to the disposal of the coffins. These were holiday times for the moorside, and their real sorrow for the sturdy, upright master of Marsh House served only to add a more subtle edge to their enjoyment. They were festivals for Witherlee likewise; and, though the Sexton held that pride became no man, seeing what he must come to in the end, he always bore himself more youthfully at a burial and looked his fellow-men more squarely in the face. This was his workshop, and it pleased him that his lustier fellows, who were proud of their skill at farming or joinering or the like, should see that he, too, man of dreams as he was, could show a deft hand at his trade. Gossip grew rife as the knot of sight-seers increased. One would tell a tale of the old days when Waynes and Ratcliffes fought at every cross-road, and another would cap the narrative with one more fearsome. The women talked of the good deeds that Wayne of Marsh had done, of the tidy bit o’ brass his coffin had cost, of the mad pranks that Shameless Wayne had played in times past. The children played hide-and-seek among the graves, or crept to the vault-edge and peered down in awed expectation, awaiting they knew not what of such terrors as their mothers had taught them to associate with the dead. The grown lasses came with lavender in their aprons, and sprinkled the vault-floor with the lovesome herb, and sent up a prayer to the unknown and dreadful God who dwelt amid the peat-wastes and the bogs—a prayer that they might escape this last close prison until wedlock had given them bairns, lest the curse of the women who were buried with empty breasts should light on them. "Th’ corpse is coming!" some one cried on the sudden. The chatter ceased, and all eyes sought the yew-shadowed turning of the pathway. Shameless Wayne, his cousin Rolf and two others carried the coffin at shoulder height. In front walked the Parson, his white hair ruffled by the breeze; behind them followed a score of kinsmen, the Long Waynes of Cranshaw over-topping all the others by a head; and behind these again walked a line of farm-men and of women-servants. "Good sakes, they’ve getten swords an’ pistols!" muttered one of the onlookers, as the crowd made a clear lane to the kirk-porch.