Very reluctantly Mr. Gramp produced his last remaining coin. She dropped it into a capacious pocket, and retired without vouchsafing him another word. Cicero, somewhat discouraged by this reception, congratulated himself that the night was fine for out-of-door slumber. He ensconced himself in a corner with his frugal supper, and listened to the chatter going on around him. It appeared to be concerned with the funeral of a local magnate. Despite the prophecy of the coin, now in Mrs. Timber's pocket, Cicero failed to see how he could extract good fortune out of his present position. However, he listened; some chance word might mean money. "Ah! 'tis a fine dry airy vault," said a lean man who proved to be a stonemason. "Never built a finer, I didn't, nor my mates neither. An' Muster Marlow'll have it all to 'isself." "Such a situation!" croaked another. "Bang opposite the Lady Chapel! An' the view from that there vault! I don't know as any corp 'ud require a finer." "Mr. Marlow'll be lonely by himself," sighed a buxom woman; "there's room for twenty coffins, an' only one in the vault. 'Tain't natural-like." "Well," chimed in the village schoolmaster, "'twill soon fill. There's Miss Marlow." "Dratted nonsense!" cried Mrs. Timber, making a dash into the company with a tankard of beer in each hand. "Miss Sophy'll marry Mr. Thorold, won't she? An' he, as the Squire of Heathton, 'as a family vault, ain't he? She'll sleep beside him as his wife, lawfully begotten." "The Thorolds' vault is crowded," objected the stonemason. "Why, there's three-hundred-year dead folk there! A very old gentry lot, the Thorolds." "Older than your Marlows!" snapped Mrs. Timber. "Who was he afore he came to take the Moat House five year ago? Came from nowhere--a tree without a root." The schoolmaster contradicted. "Nay, he came from Africa, I know--from Mashonaland, which is said to be the Ophir of King Solomon. And Mr. Marlow was a millionaire!" "Much good his money'll do him now," groaned the buxom woman, who was a Dissenter. "Ah! Dives in torment." "You've no call to say that, Mrs. Berry. Mr. Marlow wasn't a bad man." "He was charitable, I don't deny, an' went to church regular," assented Mrs. Berry; "but he died awful sudden. Seems like a judgment for something he'd done." "He died quietly," said the schoolmaster. "Dr. Warrender told me all about it--a kind of fit at ten o'clock last Thursday, and on Friday night he passed away as a sleeping child. He was not even sufficiently conscious to say good-by to Miss Sophy." "Ah, poor girl! she's gone to the seaside with Miss Parsh to nurse her sorrow." "It will soon pass--soon pass," observed the schoolmaster, waving his pipe. "The young don't think much of death. Miss Sophy's rich, too--rich as the Queen of Sheba, and she will marry Mr. Thorold in a few months. Funeral knells will give way to wedding-bells, Mrs. Berry."