, four miles off,--a quiet
little churchyard, lying in the shadow of Tinto; a place where she
herself had wished to be laid. The funeral was chiefly on horseback. We,
the family, were in coaches. I had been since the death in a sort of
stupid musing and wonder, not making out what it all meant. I knew my
mother was said to be dead. I saw she was still, and laid out, and then
shut up, and didn't move; but I did not know that when she was carried
out in that long black box, and we all went with her, she alone was
never to return.

When we got to the village all the people were at their doors. One
woman, the blacksmith Thomas Spence's wife, had a nursing baby in her
arms, and he leapt up and crowed with joy at the strange sight, the
crowding horsemen, the coaches, and the nodding plumes of the hearse.
This was my brother William, then nine months old, and Margaret Spence
was his foster-mother. Those with me were overcome at this sight; he of
all the world whose, in some ways, was the greatest loss, the least
conscious, turning it to his own childish glee.

We got to the churchyard and stood round the open grave. My dear old
grandfather was asked by my father to pray; he did. I don't remember his
words; I believe he, through his tears and sobs, repeated the Divine
words, "All flesh is grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of
the grass; the grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away, but
the word of the Lord endureth forever;" adding, in his homely and
pathetic way, that the flower would again bloom, never again to fade;
that what was now sown in dishonor and weakness, would be raised in
glory and power, like unto His own glorious body. Then to my surprise
and alarm, the coffin, resting on its bearers, was placed over that dark
hole, and I watched with curious eye the unrolling of those neat black
bunches of cords, which I have often enough seen since. My father took
the one at the head, and also another much smaller springing from the
same point as his, which he had caused to be put there, and unrolling
it, put it into my hand. I twisted it firmly round my fingers, and
awaited the result; the burial men with their real ropes lowered the
coffin, and when it rested at the bottom, it was too far down for me to
see it--the grave was made very deep, as he used afterwards to tell us,
that it might hold us all--my father first and abruptly let his cord
drop, followed by the rest. This was too much. I now saw wha