h, as
the choir drew nigh, a corpse had just been thrown by the four Sidlinch
men employed for the purpose. The cart and horse which had brought the
body thither stood silently by.

The singers and musicians from Chalk-Newton halted, and looked on while
the gravediggers shovelled in and trod down the earth, till, the hole
being filled, the latter threw their spades into the cart, and prepared
to depart.

'Who mid ye be a-burying there?' asked Lot Swanhills in a raised voice.
'Not the sergeant?'

The Sidlinch men had been so deeply engrossed in their task that they had
not noticed the lanterns of the Chalk-Newton choir till now.

'What--be you the Newton carol-singers?' returned the representatives of
Sidlinch.

'Ay, sure. Can it be that it is old Sergeant Holway you've a-buried
there?'

''Tis so. You've heard about it, then?'

The choir knew no particulars--only that he had shot himself in his apple-
closet on the previous Sunday. 'Nobody seem'th to know what 'a did it
for, 'a b'lieve? Leastwise, we don't know at Chalk-Newton,' continued
Lot.

'O yes. It all came out at the inquest.'

The singers drew close, and the Sidlinch men, pausing to rest after their
labours, told the story. 'It was all owing to that son of his, poor old
man. It broke his heart.'

'But the son is a soldier, surely; now with his regiment in the East
Indies?'

'Ay. And it have been rough with the army over there lately. 'Twas a
pity his father persuaded him to go. But Luke shouldn't have twyted the
sergeant o't, since 'a did it for the best.'

The circumstances, in brief, were these: The sergeant who had come to
this lamentable end, father of the young soldier who had gone with his
regiment to the East, had been singularly comfortable in his military
experiences, these having ended long before the outbreak of the great war
with France. On his discharge, after duly serving his time, he had
returned to his native village, and married, and taken kindly to domestic
life. But the war in which England next involved herself had cost him
many frettings that age and infirmity prevented him from being ever again
an active unit of the army. When his only son grew to young manhood, and
the question arose of his going out in life, the lad expressed his wish
to be a mechanic. But his father advised enthusiastically for the army.

'Trade is coming to nothing in these days,' he said. 'And if the war
with the French lasts, as it wi