r on
whom life had weighed so hard of late. For whatever reason he had come,
he was keeping quietly to one side. And unobserved, he, too, had his
watcher--the little model, sheltering behind a tall grave.

Two men in rusty black bore the little coffin; then came the white-robed
chaplain; then Mrs. Hughs and her little son; close behind, his head
thrust forward with trembling movements from side to side, old Creed;
and, last of all, young Martin Stone. Hilary joined the young doctor.
So the five mourners walked.

Before a small dark hole in a corner of the cemetery they stopped. On
this forest of unflowered graves the sun was falling; the east wind, with
its faint reek, touched the old butler's plastered hair, and brought
moisture to the corners of his eyes, fixed with absorption on the
chaplain. Words and thoughts hunted in his mind.

'He's gettin' Christian burial. Who gives this woman away? I do. Ashes
to ashes. I never suspected him of livin'.' The conning of the burial
service, shortened to fit the passing of that tiny shade, gave him
pleasurable sensation; films came down on his eyes; he listened like some
old parrot on its perch, his head a little to one side.

'Them as dies young,' he thought, 'goes straight to heaven. We trusts in
God--all mortal men; his godfathers and his godmothers in his baptism.
Well, so it is! I'm not afeared o' death!'

Seeing the little coffin tremble above the hole, he craned his head still
further forward. It sank; a smothered sobbing rose. The old butler
touched the arm in front of him with shaking fingers.

"Don't 'e," he whispered; "he's a-gone to glory."

But, hearing the dry rattle of the earth, he took out his own
handkerchief and put it to his nose.

'Yes, he's a-gone,' he thought; 'another little baby. Old men an'
maidens, young men an' little children; it's a-goin' on all the time.
Where 'e is now there'll be no marryin', no, nor givin' out in marriage;
till death do us part.'

The wind, sweeping across the filled-in hole, carried the rustle of his
husky breathing, the dry, smothered sobbing of the seamstress, out across
the shadows' graves, to those places, to those streets....

From the baby's funeral Hilary and Martin walked away together, and far
behind them, across the road, the little model followed. For some time
neither spoke; then Hilary, stretching out his hand towards a squalid
alley, said:

"They haunt us and drag us down. A long, dark p