Beyond the entrance hall the parlours, giving on the passage, showed also an inviting face. These rooms, owing to the thickness of their walls, the smallness and eastern aspect of the many-paned casements, were gloomy. They smelt, not of the sea but its pervading damp and of the mould which crept like leprosy over boot and book and furniture. In both, fires had been lighted but the smoke showed little liking for the damp chimneys and, in the grates, the sea-coal smouldered without flame. In the Big Parlour the best china, silver and glass had been set out and a meal laid; and the gleam of polished surface, the white glow of the freshly laundered damask, the colour of the plates and dishes made a pleasant impression. Mrs. Tom and Richbell, rising early, had helped to carry from the linhay the food piled on its shelves. Fowls were at one end of the table, beef and ham at the other and between stood mountains of splits, bowls of Cornish cream, junkets and cake and pastry. The mourners as they came in would help themselves and plates, with darkly bright knives and shining forks, were stacked in readiness. The Little Parlour had, as far as possible, been denuded of furniture; for the mourners after they had eaten, would form up there in couples, ready when the coffin should have been brought forth, to follow it. Tom Rosevear had prophesied a large gathering and the event justified him. The many who could ’call cousin’ with Sabina Byron came through the deep winding lanes to take part in her funeral and besides these persons—literally ’the mourners’—were a number who did not go up to the house but stood about on Trevorrick Sands, waiting. Though lacking the right conferred by kinship—and in the West you are not invited to a funeral, you go, if a relative, as a matter of course—they, too, would follow her and see her committed ’earth to earth’; and so numerous were they that it was said afterwards that the only person in Tregols parish who did not attend Mrs. Byron’s funeral was an old ’bedlier’ of the name of Hawken and she, poor soul, had been bedridden up ’in the teens of years.’