In the rear, a little way off, is a row of ugly sheds, yawning towards the street, where, on Sundays, the farmers who come from a distance tie their beasts, each in his separate stall. In hot days, in the summer time, when all the doors and windows of the meeting-house are set wide open, the hollow sound of horses' stamping mingles with the preacher's drowsy tones, and sometimes the congregation is startled from repose by the shrill squeal of some unlucky brute, complaining of the torture inflicted by the sharp teeth of its ill-natured mate or vicious neighbor; or, perhaps, the flutter of fans is suspended at the obstreperous neigh by which some anxious dam recalls the silly foal that has strayed from her side; or the dissonant creaking of a cramped wheel makes doleful interludes between the verses of the hymn. Here naughty boys, escaped from the confinement of the sanctuary, are wont to lounge in the wagons during prayer and sermon time, munching green pears and apples, devouring huge bunches of fennel, dill, and caraway, comparing and swapping jackknives, or striving, by means of cautious hems and whispers, and other sly signals, to attract the notice of their more decent fellows sitting near the open gallery-windows. When the black doors of the little dingy building not far from the south end of the horse-sheds are seen standing open, it is a pretty sure sign that somebody lies dead in the parish. In this gloomy place the sexton keeps his dismal apparatus,--the hearse, with its curtains of rusty sable, the bier, the spades and shovels for digging graves; and in a corner lies a coil of soiled ropes, whose rasping sound, as they slipped through the coffin-handles, while the bearers lowered the corpse into the earth, has grated harshly on many a shuddering mourner's ear. The leaves of the hearse-house door are fastened together by a hasp and pin, so that any one may enter at will. But there is no need of bolts and bars. The boys, at play, in the evening, at "I spy" or "hide and seek," never go there for concealment, although their smothered whoops may be heard issuing from every other dark corner in the neighborhood. The narrow space between the hearse-house and the sheds forms a short lane or passage-way, through which all the funeral processions pass from the street into the burying-ground, lying behind the sheds, on the western slope of the ridge upon which the village stands. This ancient cemetery was laid out by the early settlers, when they made the first allotments of land. It is a square area of two acres in extent, inclosed by a mossy picket paling, so rickety that the neighbors' sheep sometimes leap through the gaps from the adjacent pastures, and feed among the graves upon the long grass and nettles.