d through their mournful
windows; and now and then a crippled crone, or a bereaved old pauper,
hobbled to the roadway and shook her white hairs to the rain.

It seemed a long way over the boggy soil to the newly opened trench,
where the hearse stopped with its wheels half-sunken, and the chief
_croquemort_, without any ado, threw the coffin over his shoulder and
walked to the place of sepulture. Five _fossoyeurs_, at the remote end
of the trench, were digging and covering, as if their number rather than
their work needed increase, and a soldier in blue overcoat, whose hands
were full of papers, came up at a commercial pace, and cried:

"_Corps trente-deux!_"

Which corresponded to the figures on the box, and to the number of
interments for the day.

The delvers made no pause while the priest read the service, and the
clods fell faster than the rain. The box was nicely mortised against
another previously deposited, and as there remained an interstice
between it and that at its feet, an infant's coffin made the space
complete.

The Latin service was of all recitations the most slovenly and
contemptuous; the priest might have been either smiling or sleeping; for
his very red face appeared to have nothing in common with his scarcely
moving lips; and the assistant looked straight at the trench, half
covetously, half vindictively, as if he meant to turn the body out of
the box directly, and run away with the grave-clothes. It took but two
minutes to run through the text; the holy water was dashed from the
hyssop; and the priest, with a small shovel, threw a quantity of clods
after it. "_Requiescat in pace!_" he cried, like one just awakened, and
now for the first time the grave-diggers ceased; they wanted the
customary fee, _pour boire_.

The exiles never felt so destitute before; not a sou could be found in
the Colony. But the little hunchback stepped up with the cross, and gave
it to the chief _fossoyeur_, dropping a franc into his hand; each of the
women added some sous, and the younger one quietly tied a small round
token of brass to the wood, which she kissed thrice; it bore these
words:

"_A mon ami._"

"A little more than kin and less than kind!" whispered Andy Plade, who
knew what such souvenirs meant, in Paris.

The Colony went away disconsolate; but the little hunchback stopped on
the margin, and looked once more into the pit where the box was fast
disappearing.

"Pardon our debts, _bon Dieu!_" he said