d up by the rays of the sun that day
by day climbed higher in the cold blue of the sky of spring. Young
blades of green lay scattered like emerald shafts amid the tawny
wastes of the winter grass, and swelling branches told of a year's
returning life. Just as the golden chalice of the first crocus
opened on the graves of the Rehoboth burial-yard, the old woman at
the chapel-house died.

* * * * *

The funeral was to take place at three o'clock, but long before
the hour old Joseph's kitchen was filled with a motley group of
mourners. They came from far and near, from moor and field, and
from the cottages over the way. Every branch of the family was
represented--sons and daughters, grandchildren, nephews and
nieces, even to babies in arms. As they straggled in, the women
attired in their best black, and the men wearing their top-hats (a
headgear worn by the Lancashire operative only on the state
occasion of funerals), it seemed as though old Joseph, like
Abraham, was the father of a race as the stars of heaven for
multitude, and as the sands by the seashore, innumerable.

An oppressive atmosphere filled the room, where, on a table under
the window, the open coffin rested, in which lay, exposed to all
eyes, the peaceful features and straightened limbs of the dead. As
the mourners entered they bent reverently over the corpse, and
moistened its immobile features with their tears, whispering
kindly words as to the appearance the old woman wore in death, and
calling to mind some characteristic grace and virtue in her past
life.

On another table was stacked a number of long clay pipes with
tobacco, from which the men assisted themselves, smoking with the
silence and stolidity of Indians, the women preserving the same
mute attitude, save for an occasional groan and suppressed
sigh--the feminine method in Lancashire of mourning for the dead.

The last mourners had long arrived, and the company was seated in
an attitude of hushed and painful expectancy for the officiating
minister. There was no sign, however, of his appearance; and the
mourners asked themselves in silence if he who was to perform the
final rites for the dead had forgotten the hour or the day.

The fingers of the old clock slowly crept along the dial-plate
towards four, the hour so relentlessly enforced for interments for
half a century by the sexton, who was now about to lay away his
own wife in the greedy maw of the grave.