A poor shallow little heap of rough soil grown compact with years. A few blades of rank grass standing up from it, starved and stiff like the bristles on a hog’s back. All around the barrows stretched green and kindly. Only here and on that other were sordid desolation. No stone, no boards, no long-lifeless flower even to emphasize the irony of an epitaph. Nothing but entire indifference and the withering footmark of time. “I mind the day,” said the sexton. “Looking ower the hedge yon I see Vokes’ pig running, wi’ a straw in’s mouth. ‘We shall have rain,’ says I, and rain it did wi’ a will. Three o’ them came wi’ the coffin--the old marn and a young ’un--him ’ud be your brother now--and the long doctor fro’ Chis’ll. In the arternoon, as I was garthering up my tools, the old marn come back by hisself and chucked a sprig o’ verv’n on the mound. ‘Oho,’ thinks I. ‘That’ll be to keep the devil fro’ walking.’ The storm druv up while he wur starnding there and sent him scuttling. I tuk shelter i’ the church, and when I come out by and by, there wur the witch-weed gone--washed fro’ the grave, you’ll say, and I’ll not contradict ye; but the devil knows his own.” “What do you mean?” He turned and spat behind him before answering. “He died o’ cold i’ the inside, eh?” “Something of that sort. The doctor’s certificate said so.” “Ah!” He took off his cap again and rubbed his hot head all over with a whisp of handkerchief. “Supposing he’d been laid two fut and no more--it wur a smarl matter arter the rain to bust the lid and stick his fingers through.” “A small matter, perhaps, for a living man.” He glanced sidelong at me, then gingerly pecked at the mound with his foot. “No grass’ll ever grow there,” said he. “That remains to be seen.” I took a sixpence from my pocket and held it out to him. “Look here,” I said. “Take this, and I’ll give you one every week if you’ll do your best to make and keep it like--like the other graves.” He put out his hand instinctively, but withdrew it empty. “No, no,” he said; “it’s no marner o’ good.” “Try.” “I’d rather not. Good-marning to ye,” and he turned his back on me and walked straight off, with his shoulders hunched up to his ears. I watched his going moodily, but with no great surprise. It was small matter for wonder that Modred’s death should have roused uncanny suspicions among the ignorant and superstitious who knew of us. The mystery that overhung our whole manner of life was sufficient to account for that. For long after the sexton had resumed his work--so long, indeed, that when I rose to go, only his head and shoulders bobbed up and down above the rim of the pit he was digging--I sat on the grass beside that poor sterile mound and sought inspiration of it. But no voice spoke to me from its depths. CHAPTER XXXV. ONE SAD VISITOR.